The Bible says that God created Man in His own image. Man evolved from monkeys. Man did not even exist on this planet millions of years ago. Do Chritians conveniantly overlook this seemingly obvious discrepency?
How does evolution in general fit in with the Christian idea that God created the beasts? Doesn’t evolution show “God’s word” in the Bible to be false?
The general Creationist argument is to take a few dozen isolated incidents that, on the surface, appear to contradict the foundation of evolution, and say they prove without a doubt that evolution is false. Then, since evolution is false, Creationism MUST be true (something about Occum’s Razor, dunno).
The problem with that is their examples are usually either wrong, based off a information that has been wrongly interpreted (like all the hooey about the 2nd law of thermodynamics), or there is a scientific explanation for them.
Of course, they also ignore that Hebrew lore is widely told in allegory and metaphor, focusing on the morals of history instead of fact, and that characters in these stories are assigned “ages” according to their importance, not how long they actually lived. If you were to interpret the Garden of Eden story literally, taking into account that a 300-year-old Adam and an 800-year-old Moses and so on aren’t actually literally their ages, you would have an earth that’s about 2000 years old, I’m told.
Of course, some Christians believe evolution is scientific fact, and simply accept that the Creation story is metaphorical, or believe that for whatever reason, God chose to make humans through the mechanics of evolution. Another common interpretation is that “in his own image” meant “in possession of consciousness and a soul,” like God.
Please do not imply that all Christians are Creationists.
way’t was ‘splained to me as a kidren in SunnySchool was that God made ev’rything, The Bible tolt us that, and scientists’re just tellin’ 'bout the details of how’t was done. As I heard’t anyway.
BTW, Christian, as a concept,'s as likely to be inclusive as it’s to be exclusive.
What incidents are usually cited? If all possibilities have been proved false, then the only remaining possibility must be true. In order for this to work, you would have to provide firm evidence against the theory of evolution and all of the aspects of it.
“Metaphorical” can be a smokescreen which you can use to muddy the waters of many different arguments. Christian scholars must surely have a more sound argument? Humans aren’t the only beings in possesion of consiousness, but isn’t the possesion of a soul a conveniently un-provable idea?
Sure, but religion isn’t about proof.
Deliberately misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the statements of others can be a pretty good smokescreen, as well.
If you are looking to “disprove” Christianity, then you ought to look up the threads where this has already been discussed.
If you are attempting to claim that all Christians are in lock-step regarding their views of science, you are simply wrong. (Heck, we’re hardly in lock-step regarding the beliefs of Christianity.)
I have no problem with the descriptions of evolution provided by the scientific community. The usual approach for theistic evolutionists is to accept that life evolved on this planet into many different species. At some point, when consciousness had evolved, God chose to interact with the human species in a special way. This does not contradict the “created in the image” statement in any way, as the “creation” could have taken many forms and the “image” refers to the spiritual traits of God, not any physical characteristics that humans may possess.
(BTW, you will ever so much more cogent when you attack religious belief if you do not fall into the trap of saying something terribly silly such as “Man evolved from monkeys.” which everyone who understands evolutionary theory knows is false.
I suggest that the world was mosying along quite nicely for millions of years, without religion. The irony is that religion was invneted by man. The idea of God and Jesus was invented. Sure, religion may have been invented to explain the workings of the world, but Christianity itself is, I believe, an invention. I feel the onus is on Christianity to prove itself. This is all just my general belief, please don’t take this as slamming Christianity for the sake of it.
And the wheel was invented by Man to serve Man’s needs. No animal on Earth recognized the need to develop a wheel before Man arrived.
Man is the first animal which has recognized the need to create religion to explain the “workings of the world” and the world’s relationship to God. Just because it is a fairly new thing around here does not make it invalid.
Some scholars speculate that religion has been a part of human society since man became sentient. Neandertal burials suggest some sort of belief in an afterlife, and some say that the cave paintings of Cro-Magnon man suggest a form of spirituality, as do the “goddess” statuettes.
I went to a Christian school, and thus are familiar with a few of the ways that some Christains “discount” evolution.
They claim that the fossil record is either falsified (as in the Piltdown Man), misinterpereted, or misunderstood. The fossil remains which appear to be of stages of man’s development are “deformed” people, or “deformed” apes. They further claim that man and dinosaur co-existed. (I remember one picture in our “science” books which showed farmers tilling a field while brontosauri munched on trees in the background.) The dinosaurs were killed off in Noah’s Flood. This was no “ordinary” flood of course, which explains why creatures were fossilized by it. (Fossilization can occur in a few years, they say, and site a few dubious examples.)
They also say that dating techniques are very flawed. (I remember the “science” text claiming that the carbon-dating equipment had dated ashes from a day old fire as being millions of years old.)
They say that the Earth was created with the appearance of age, because Adam and Eve were able to eat from the trees, which means the trees must have been created mature.
Lastly, they claim that scientists lie because they want to push their atheistic agenda, and will do “anything” to cover up the “truth.” I’ve read several books on creationism. They can be very entertaining.
By the way, man didn’t evolve from monkeys.
Well, maybe fundamentalists did.
I quite agree.
I am not looking to disprove Christianity. I am not even looking to attack Christianity. My way of learning from debates like this is to throw my ideas and beliefs into the ring, and let others use them as a jumping off point. I expect to learn from others opinions, and if it seems like I am attacking any particular belief, then… well that’s not what I intended. Tom, if my posts are an affornt to you then I’m sorry, I didn’t intend it.
Tom, you said that saying “Man evolved from Monkey’s” is silly. OK, so I don’t know as much about evolution as you do. Rather than simply saying it is silly, can you briefly tell me what is wrong with my statement?
A few points:
Humans evolved from apes, not monkeys. Apes are not monkeys, monkeys are not apes. Both share a common primate ancestor. A minor thing, and irrelevant to your main point, but still.
That “Man did not even exist on this planet millions of years ago” would be considered a false premise by most Special Creationists (that is, those folks who believe in Special Creation - note also that not all Christians are creationists). If one does not accept that evolution occurred, one (another, different one) is not likely to convince one (the first one) with an argument which proceeds from such an assumption.
Evolution does not show “God’s word” to be false; it only shows that God is not a necessary causal agent for the diversity of life. One must also consider which exact parts of the Bible are “God’s word” and which are “Man’s word”, or “Man’s interpretation of God’s word”. There are many books in the Bible, and not all claim to have come directly from God (consider the various letters and gospels written by the Apostles, for example).
Ahem.
Try this:
“I suggest that the world was mosying along quite nicely for millions of years, without language. The irony is that language was invneted [sic, also abused] by man. The idea of spelling and grammar was invented. Sure, language may have been invented to aid communication between individuals, but Arabic itself is, I believe, an invention. I feel the onus is on Arabic to prove itself. This is all just my general belief, please don’t take this as slamming Arabic for the sake of it.”
In fact, your objections can be used almost verbatim for everything in life, right down to the concepts of society and morality which we take for granted. These things are all “invented” by people to help us get through an incomprehensible world, and if they become unuseful to us, are discarded. Given that religion is still around, it strikes me as being fairly obvious that we still, as a society, have some use for it.
Now, the Baptist sect which taught my school did not differentiate man’s word from God’s. “If it’s in the Bible,” they said, “It’s God’s Word.” Basically, the Apostles were taking dictation from the Almighty.
Oh, I’ll state it outright: all Christians are Creationists. I’m nitpicky about language: a “creationist” believes that God created everything. It’s just that not all Christiants are Biblical literalist creationists: we don’t all follow the 7-day rule.
The Catholics say this much: we don’t care how God did it, just that He did. The important thing is that God created the human soul, and that man’s ontological leap into being wasn’t just a spontaneous thing. If our ancestors were apes, hey, good for us.
As Anna said to the King of Siam in the musical:
“Your Majesty, the Bible was not written by men of science, but by men of faith. It is their explanation of the miracle of creation–which is the same miracle whether it took six days or many centuries.”
Never heard it put better.
Such as:
-What appears to be a human footprint alongside a dinosaur print (It was a case of tampering and distortion of the rockbed)
-A few dozen cases where radiological dating is way off (I suppose Creationists have never heard of a mistake or contamination)
-Extrapolating backwards rates at which our planet is spinning, the oceans are rising, the magnetic fields are decaying, etc. (They assume all rates are universally constant; by that logic, I could take the amount I grew five years ago until now, say 5 inches, and conclude I’ll be 100 feet tall in so many years)
Needless to say, the attacks are ALWAYS on individual cases. There’s no trying to disprove the logic or methods themselves as broad concepts, but simply trying to show as many errors and inconsistancies as possible.
Try these sites for more of these examples (and their subsequent disproving) than you can shake a stick at:
Pro-Creation: http://evolution-facts.org/
Pro-Evolution: http://www.talkorigins.org/
Needless to say, talkorigins.org is a lot more credible, scientific and thorough than evolution-facts.org.
You speak so matter of factly about man coming from apes.
You also assume that everyone believes in that type of evolution.
I just find that funny.