Evolution is not taken on “faith” and no Christian has to “justify” accepting proven facts…
Could we get a gibberish to English translation of this sentence, please?
There are much larger problems for your salvation theology than the nature of man’s “creation,” but bear in mind that evolution does not conflict with a belief that God created the universe or the human soul.
Actually, no it doesn’t.
I’m not sure what you think this has to do with anything but I might as well point out that a belief in the omniscience of god is a point of favor of a rational belief in theistic creation. Maybe God knew how to set off the Big bang just exactly so as to result in the unimaginably complex chain of physical events which resulted in the formation of the Earth, the emergence of organic life and the ultimate evolution of homo sapiens.
I’m not a theist myself but something along these lines at least does not fly in the face of proven facts as YEC beliefs do.
If you think that evolution is a problem for your personal theology then you need to examine your theology because the facts aren’t going to accomodate you.
Since “Father of the Board”, D the C, anointed me, a mere neophyte of only 7 months’s standing, a man of wit recently, I feel drawn to respond to this thread at this point, having religiously avoided it up until now.
Many Christians with a brain believe that God was instrumental in evolution. Adam represents the first homo sapiens (does that need another sapiens? - always forget), and it was at this point in time that the story in Genesis unrolled.
Me, being a simple lad, can’t look at all the wonders of creation (including the insects, etc.) without thinking that God created them as they are. I’m not entirely happy with I.D. (seem to be a lot of holes to my non-scientific mind) but I just can’t get with the programme re gorillas, etc. ultimately descending from whatever: amoebae, protowhatnots, even if you spell all your words in Greek.
YEC is a refuge for nutters, I.D. I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s something to get too hot under the collar about. If and when I get to have a chat with God, I’ll certainly ask him how he did it, but I don’t think it’ll be the first item on my agenda somehow. I’d want confirmation that he did indeed invent cricket and that the English are therefore his second chosen race.
Either you believe the Bilble is a Holy Book that says something about God and Christ the universe and everything or not. If you do not believe the Bible to be true what on earth do you still base your belief on?
If you doubt parts of what is written why aren’t you doubting the whole thing?
You who call themselves “Christians” (quotes intended) but are nitpicking the Holy Book of your religion for bits you like and disregard what you don’t like, what are you basing your nitpicking on?
You are just playing another version of God of the Gaps.
Are you just going to retreat just another small step when another of things you picked is dispelled?
When are you going to say "O.K. this book I’ve been nitpicking for kernels of “Truth” is just an ancient text, like the Mahabarata or the inventory for the Knossos palace.
Not to say that there aren’t some nice slogans in the book, to use as a tool to guide you how to live your life but it’s no longer Holy. You can get the same from other religions.
Point is you no longer believe in the God of the Bible, you believe in “something”. Your own cosy vision but is it still Christian?
Or should we just adjust the meaning of “Christian” to “Someone who feels there is ‘something’ and tries to make up an image with selected items from a book he otherwise doesn’t believe to be true”
You know, I’m getting real tired of other people telling me what I can and cannot believe in order to be what they consider a real “Christian”. The sacrifice and spiritual emphasis of Lent is an essential part of my faith. I cannot see not making some sort of sacrifice and making a deliberate, conscious effort to bring myself closer to God. Ash Wednesday found me in church, as will Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday as well as, of course, Easter. These observances, both the things done in the privacy of my own home and the ones done publicly in church directly affect my faith and spiritual well-being. Evolution vs. Creation is, ultimately, an academic exercise to me. Frankly, I think the only effect the debate will have on my soul is at times like this when I get sick of being told I’m not a real Christian. Lenten observances do have a direct effect on my soul.
I gather Fundamentalists don’t observe or acknowledge Lent at all. If I were to use the perjorative language some have used to describe those of us who accept evolution, I’d say they choose to ignore Christ’s sacrifice and the pain and temptation He endured on our behalf. Does that mean they’re less Christian than I am? No. It means their tradition teaches different things. Lent’s very well ingrained around here. Pretty much every restaurant in town except the vegetarian ones is offering a seafood special, even if they don’t specifically connect it to Lent, and the public college I went to served fish on Friday year round in the cafeteria. Still, as someone who doesn’t give up meat on Friday for Lent, I find presenting people who do so with the opportunity to have good fish as far less oppresive than telling me my neice and nephew cannot learn about evolution in public schools. The latter would be the equivalent of forcing me not to eat meat on Fridays.
Look, Genesis contradicts itself within the first two chapters. (Here’s a link for those who are interested.) Chapter 1 verses 9-25 talks about God creating plants, then the sun, moon, and stars, then animals, all before He creates man in verse 27. In Chapter 2, another telling of the creation story, God creates man in verse 7 and places him in Eden. It isn’t until verse 19 that God creates animals. The exact words, according to the New International Version, the one I linked to, are " Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name." I don’t see how you could read that any other way than that God created them then, not earlier, before He created man. That’s one of the main reasons I can’t accept Creationism or literal, Biblical inerrancy. That doesn’t mean I don’t continue to read the Bible or accept it any less; that doesn’t mean I don’t try to live my life every day according to the teachings of Jesus Christ or that He is any less my Lord and Saviour. It means that I don’t believe a relatively recent development in theology which is not part of my Episcopal tradition. I respectfully argue that the fact that I don’t accept Creationism is no more or less indicative of my degree or sincerity of faith than a Baptist’s not going to church on Maundy Thursday or not even knowing what Maundy Thursday is.
On Sunday, my church will be observing Palm Sunday in traditional Episcopal fashion. This means we’ll not only re-enact Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but also His trial and crucifiction. During part of that re-enactment, the congregation plays the part of the ordinary people of Jerusalem. That means that we, the faithful churchgoers of my church, when presented with the choice of freeing He Who became our Lord and Saviour or freeing Barabbas, a notorious criminal, we as a congregation call, “Crucify Him!” and “Give us Barabbas!” We call for the execution of Jesus and mock Him. Each year, this reminds me powerfully of my own sinfullnes and that, despite my best intentions, despite my desire to do the will of God, I may well be as sadly mistaken as the people of Jerusalem were. I don’t know if any other denomination does this; I don’t know if any other denomination does anything similar. I do know that if I were to say that other denominations or other Christians were not true Christians because they don’t do this, I would be breaking the Commandment Christ gave us, appropriating to myself judgement I believe is reserved for God and sinning greatly. While I know as a Christian, that my sins are forgiven, I also know I’m not supposed to look for opportunities to commit them!
Latro, there is no need to believe that the Bible is literal or inerrant in order to have faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ.
Jesus never taught that the Law and the Prophets of his day had to be viewed in such a manner (literal and inerrant). In fact, he scandalized many in his day by claiming that it is not necessary to obey every letter of the law in order to do the Will of the Living God.
It is not a contradiction to believe all of the following at once:
Jesus was the prophecied Messiah with a mission to redeem humankind by his sacrifice.
Those who wrote about Jesus after his death were mere humans who recorded stories circulating at that time.
The word of Paul is not the word of God.
The Old Testament is a mixture of genres, only parts of which were intended literally, and only parts of which prophecy the Christ.
The oldest Biblical stories are records of the Hebrews’ oral tradition, which was not necessarily literal knowledge.
Those who have, over the years, compiled and translated the various versions of the modern Bible were not directly guided by God, but just doing the best they could.
God is not bound in leather. Jesus, while he spoke of the Living Word of God, did not instruct his followers to adhere to every letter of scripture. He told them to love one another and love God – and implied that these acts are merely 2 sides of one coin.
Also, go back to the Old Testament and see how many times we hear of the Word of God not coming in scriptural form, but in dreams, through angels, or in a still small voice.
Bible != God. Kick off those training wheels – the world is bigger than you suppose.
The error is in trying to read a first century book with a 21st century mentality.
Contrary to what numerous posts have intimated, the people back then weren’t ignorant stone-breakers. They were the same sophisticated people there are today.
What’s different? The narrative.
First century books were written with concepts that were useful for making sense in that time.
By contrast the march of time has created new narratives that we use to make sense of the times. Science is one of the dominant narratives we now use. People these days write in the expectatation that the reader has a basic scientific literacy.
But it is just an expression of contempt for 2000 years of human endeavour to bring an expectation of current scientific literacy to a 1st century book. Back then the narrative was allegorical and people understood that.
The bible isn’t a textbook that you can cross reference for answers to difficult questions. To make sense of it requires an effort of interpretation.
How can you begin to know what Christ’s teachings are but through the bible. If the bible is not the holy word of god then for all we know Jesus was just a judean rebel nailed to a cross for treason. What we think of as his teachings might just be the words of his disillusioned companions, trying to hang on. They might just be a philosophical or literal exercise. Or the effort of a Roman ‘CIA’ to subvert Judaism.
Anything goes, it may all be completely made up. You do not know what to believe…
Latro, I recently started a Pit thread that turned into a trainwreck on just this point. I do not fucking care if you think the Bible was delivered just as it stands in King James English on gold-leaf scrolls by an archangel while angelic choirs sang Hallelujahs.** But you do not get to tell me what I can and cannot believe.**
There is a public library near my home. It contains the Encyclopedia Britannica and some scholarly histories of North Carolina. It also contains The DaVinci Code, some VonDanikenery, Answers in Genesis, and a few other volumes of equal reliability.
I do not reject the value of the Britannica or the histories because of the unreliability of the other contents. I have criteria enabling me to evaluate the reliability of what is accessible to me.
I have the same capacity with regard to another collection of books, this one bound together in black leather. Diogenes, Tom~ and I have all posted at length on some of the methodology used.
Now take your all-or-nothing attitude and carry it over to the Pit if you care to insult me and my co-religionists who are not Biblical literalists any more.
But Latro, no one here seems to have a problem with accepting that the Bible contains an accurate account of Jesus’ ministry, and that He was who He is depicted as in the Gospels.
People do have an issue with the claims that the parts of the Bible which conflict with the evidence of nature and logic MUST be read literally and not as poetry, metaphor, parable, or allegory.
As I believe the Bible says what God intends it to say in the way that God intended it to be said, the basis for seeming contradictions must lie in my interpretation. I am not so arrogant as to believe that I have a perfect understanding of scripture. I believe that anyone who cannot admit that they may be misinterpreting a passage is guilty of pride.
Wne the contortions needed to bring an interpretation in line with observed reality become too great, I would think that one should reexamine the assumptions they made in their interpretation.
I do expect all to be made clear to me at Judgement, just before I am cast into the Lake of Fire.
I’m not telling you you cannot believe ‘X’.
People can believe the strangest things. But a belief must be based on something, a personal experience an account or a book. You believe something to be true. In this case it is the teachings of this man Jesus (plus all it takes to believe him from what is written in the old testament).
I’m asking why you think ‘X’ should be true when A, B, C, D, R, S, T, Y and Z are proven to be false and 8 other letters highly dubious. Why do you continue to take ‘X’ as ‘oh but that one still goes’?
Nice analogy.
Sure, the list of kings might still be useful…maybe
I’m sorry if you feel insulted, just asking why you believe what.
No, it isn’t. Pay attention, willya. You even quoted back to me the parts of the discussion wherein it was pointed out what is in fact “essential” to understanding Christianity, but you apparently didn’t bother to read or comprehend it.
If Creation is so essential to understanding Christianity, why isn’t a belief in Special Creation included in either the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed? Both creeds just say, “God…the maker of heaven and earth”, but they don’t specify “made how”. The early church fathers who put those two creeds together managed to cover every other point of belief, but for some reason they left out a belief in how the world was created as one of the things you had to believe in order to call yourself a Christian. Why is that?
If Creation is so essential to understanding Christianity, why don’t the Assemblies of God have a belief in “six days,baby!” creation included in their “16 Fundamental Articles of Faith”?
Why doesn’t the Southern Baptist Convention have a belief in “six days, baby!” creation included in “The Baptist Faith and Message”?
Answer: because it’s not essential to Christianity.
True, “the wages of sin is death”–but what does that have to do with ANYTHING we’re talking about here?
Well, again, I’m not gonna sit here and debate heresy with a heretic. You believe in a God that is somehow slightly incompetent and lacks the foresight that a seventh-grader building a science project would have; I don’t.
No, creation does not “keep coming back up”, and no, it is not all through the New Testament. If you think it is, please provide some Bible cites to support your assertion.
Yeah, how about that God. Blows my fuckin’ mind every time I sit down and think about it, I can tell ya.
You are making two mistakes here.
First, you are assuming that because the Bible is inerrant on doctrinal issues, that it is also inerrant on scientific issues.
Which it isn’t.
It wasn’t written to function as a sort of Encyclopedia Brittanica, where you could look up answers to questions about health and science. It was written to function as a set of guidelines for behavior. Question: Moslems don’t assume that the Koran is word-for-word inerrant on the subject of science–why do you assume the Bible is?
Second, you are assuming that because I/we believe the Bible is not inerrant on scientific issues that we also believe the Bible is not inerrant on doctrinal issues. This is evidently because you have not been reading the previous posts, in which I/we have repeatedly affirmed that we do believe the Bible–but when we say we “believe the Bible”, what we mean is, we believe the Bible is inerrant on doctrine, not on science. Again, the Bible was not written as a science book.
In other words, we believe that the Bible tells us what is important to believe and how it’s important to act in order to be good Christians–but we do not believe that the Bible gives us answers to scientific questions.
The Bible also does not give us answers on issues such as medicine and nutrition and sanitation and agriculture–why do you think it would give us answers to evolution?
You should always read an entire thread’s previous postings before you jump in and make a contribution. If you had done this, you would have known that we have already discussed this. I suggest you use the “Search This Thread” function, above, and look for the phrase “common sense”.
Well, again, you have not been paying attention, or you would know what exactly it is that Polycarp and Siege and Tris and I believe.
And, according to Romans 10:9, this is all that’s required to qualify as a Christian: If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."
That’s actually the rock-bottom basic premise of Christianity.
Everything else is, really, just trimmings.
Latro, you are missing the point.
Christ’s teachings don’t address the issue of Evolution vs. Creation.
Jesus didn’t address the issue of how or when the world was created. His teachings have absolutely nothing to do with evolution or creation. His teachings are all about sin and redemption and faith. Not a single word in any of the four gospels is about whether the world was created in six days or 4 billion years, not a single word in the four gospels is about whether God magically poofed! everything into existence or whether He used evolution.
Your coming into the thread and complaining that we cannot know Christ’s teachings except through the Bible is off-topic. And, again, your assumption that because people don’t believe the Bible is inerrant on “science”, that they also don’t believe the Bible is inerrant on “doctrine” is incorrect.
Again, in this thread we’ve already touched on “how we decide which parts of the Bible to believe”.
I do. Do you have the KJV verse handy for comparison?
The way “Now the LORD God had formed” reads to me not like “And then, after God created man, he then created beasts”, but rather “Now then, kiddos, you may remember that God had created the beasts. Got it? OK, after that, God created man…”
But I’m taking only your out-of-context quote of only one version, so maybe there’s more to it than meets my eye. But from what you’ve posted, I don’t see that great of a contrdiction.
[QUOTE=David Simmons]
Well, earthworms do turn the soil over and help to keep it fertile so that vegetation grows well. And all animal life is ultimately dependent on vegetation for survival. Eagles are sometimes scavengers (and sometimes thieves from other birds) and help clean up, but bacteria also do this job.
“Up” and “down”, “more” or “less” valuable are so loaded with human values that I have a hard time agreeing that eagles are “up” and earthworms are “down.”
[QUOTE]
And yet it seems that both have produced a "whoosh"ing sound in your ear canals.
No? I can, totally. I fact, I saw something on the TV the other day that for me put the final nail in the coffin of the idea that a designer is needed, or even beneficial at all.
It was on Scientific American. A guy had made 2 blocks of similar size, connected to each other with a few wires and a robotic arm. The robotic arm would cause the blocks to move a little bit in relation to each other, in a pretty meaningless way. He then modelled this contraption in a computer, so that it was a 3-D representation. The surrounding area was programmed to simulate water. The model was then instructed to swim.
Needless to say, it didn’t swim very far. It was then instructed to reproduce itself 300 times, with minor random variations. Variables included the size and shape of the blocks, direction and speed of the robotic arms, and the rare chance of a new mutant block attaching itself in a random place. Then each of these 300 mutant offspring were tested to see which would swim the furthest. The winner was then instructed to produce 300 mutant offspring, and on and on it went.
After several thousand iterations, they took a look at what natural selection and random mutation had produced – it was a quite proficient and sophisticated swimmer, looking and moving like a segmented eel or shark. It was quite striking. And very cool!
Other simulations, both in water and on dry land, produced some far more alien looking but no less efficient critters. In each case, the programmers exclaimed that there was no way they would have thought to come up with the designs that evolution had produced. Their efforts at creation would have paled in comparison.
In the lab at least, evolution had outclassed creation by orders of magnitude.
I can easily see that if the computer program had been a good bit more robust, and left to reproduce several million more times, almost anything would have been possible. Even a gorilla.
BTW, I was prepared to sell my left testicle to get a copy of that program. But I can’t find it. So I’m trying to write a simplistic 2-D version of it on my own. If it turns out to be really cool, I’ll make it available to Dopers.
The problem, Latro, is that you have made God and Jesus dependent on the Bible, subservient to a book.
You claim that if the Bible fails, Jesus fails.
Jesus himself would reject such a notion. Recall his comment regarding the Temple.
Don’t forget also that before Jesus the exile and the destruction of the 1st temple were major crises that threatened a similarly narrow view of God held by many at that time, who thought that if YHWH had no tabernacle, then all would fall to pieces. It took Ezekiel to assert that God is present everywhere, wherever His people are. We accept that now – at the time, it was a revolutionary idea.
You could burn every scripture on the planet, and it would not change the nature of reality or of Jesus’ mission one whit. And don’t forget that Jesus, in Matthew 25, says that many who call him Lord will not be found righteous, while others who never heard of Jesus will be found righteous because they did the Will of the Father.
More to the point of the OP, the 2 creation scenarios described in Gen 1-2 are irreconcilable. There is no Biblical creation story. Rather, there are ancient Hebrew creation stories contained in the Bible.
If the ancient editors of the Torah wanted to record The True Story, they would not have preserved both accounts.
It seems clear that these redactors, even in their day, understood the difference between their ancient traditions and actual history (although as pointed out above, their notions of genre are much different from ours). It’s a shame that some folks today cannot.
It’s even more of a shame that some believe that their faith will collapse if they do.
No I’m assuming that because it is errant on ‘scientific’ issues it just very well might be wrong on what you call ‘doctrinal’ issues as well.
Your previous postings on ‘common sense’ don’t cut it. Common sense would tell you your book is not to be trusted when it fails you on several issues
I don’t, sorry for the confusion.
Yes it was, it does (try to) give answers to questions. What else is Genesis?
So virgin birth, water into wine, walking on water, rising of dead etc etc etc
Which one is scientifically wrong and to be ignored and which is essential doctrine?
My common sense says they are all untrue.
Every time something is proven to be wrong it is science or well, just not important?
Again, yes it does. Genesis tries to tell us how the world started.
But because it conflicts with what we know today you choose to ignore it by this distinction of your making between ‘sience’ and ‘doctrine’
And why should I believe exactly this itty bitty bit of the book?
Maybe this was just inserted by some subset of Christianity to exclude another subset, politics.
Again, If you don’t believe in the Biblic truth how do you know which bits to pick?
Plus the rest is not just trimmings, you also need to believe there is such a thing as sin, a God to forgive it, the Messiah concept etc etc
Not in the Gospels, no but in the other bit it does say i was poofed.
And we are to believe that first part of the bible too, because it is what validates Jesus’s role as saviour in the first place.
Without the old testament, with the creation bit, why should we believe there is a single God called Yahweh, who created sin, that we need to be saved from?
