Atheism is not the only alternative to believing that Genesis is The Truth–even though you don’t appear a 100% believer in Biblical Inerrancy.
The Roman Catholic Church, for one, has no problems with Evolution. Either Macro or Micro. But, raised Catholic in the Bible Belt, I realize that some don’t really consider RC’s “Christian.”
In point of fact, you did not present such an interpretation, you asked us to present an interpretation which you would find personally satisfying. You made no detailed attempt to reconcile Genesis with science yourself.
You seem to be misinformed about the Bible in several areas. Taking them one at a time:
[ul][li]There isn’t a single demonstrable instance of fulfilled predictive prophecy anywhere in the Bible. This is a subject which is too long to get into in detail here, but I assure you, not a single instance of alleged Biblical prophecy fulfillment holds up to honest examination[/li]
[li]The archaeological evidence of the Ancient Near East is decidely in contradiction to many of the Bible’s most key historical claims. Again, this is a long subject but I can address any of these points in great detail in another thread if you wish. [/li]
[li]Internal harmony? You must be joking. Would you like to see a list of internal contradictions?[/li]
[li]The Bible (both Testaments) was written over a period of about 600-800 years (with much of the definitive editing, syncretizing and narrative composition of the Pentateuch coming about the 5th Century BCE after the Babylonian exile), not 1600 year. The books show a great deal of theological change and evolution even in those few hundred years.[/ul][/li]
Why would it make us do that? We might roll our eyes perhaps but why would we cringe because you have some naive and uniformed beliefs about your Bible?
Knock yourself out. Just don’t expect us to be able to help you formulate a reconcilliation with scientific evidence.
That’s what all creation myths tend to be like.
Actually, the order IS unrealistic, particularly in the Biblical claim that the earth was created before the stars. Not only that, but the Biblical chronology isn’t even consistent, as has been pointed out already. Was Adam created before the animals or afterwards?
Have you ever heard of retroviral genes? They can only come about by shared ancestry. The genetic evidence is not just about similar “material.” It can be definitively used to trace genetic lineage.
To do so you must be willing to perform feats of logical gymnastics that many of us are not inclined to attempt. With enough unsupported assumptions you can shoehorn any theory to match the bible. The question becomes what is the worth of that theory (or alternatively, that interpretation of the bible)?
IMO, a much more elegant solution is to believe in the bible as allegory and ignore the obvious scientific inaccuracies as something that was perfectly suited to the intended audience. Despite your insistence to the contrary there’s really no way to reconcile a strict literal interpretation of Genesis with current theory. They don’t match up and no amount of hand waving is going to make them match up.
As someone said, creationism is bad science, but it’s worse religion. It’s mainly people with a rigidly held belief trying to fit God into a mold of their own making.
Well, in that case I doubt you’re going to get much help here. There is nothing atheist about the view that religion, and the Christian Bible in particular, are not suitable vehicles for learning about the physical world around us. Physics, chemistry, and biology tell us things that the Bible simply cannot. Many forms of Christianity, Catholicism being one obvious example, take the Bible as an expression of faith and a guide to how one should lead one’s life without attempting to use it as a science text or as a historically accurate description of past events. If you tried to do so honestly, you’d be an atheist pretty darn quick-- the Bible just doesn’t stand up to scrutiny in its science or its history.
I can understand why someone might want to believe in a God. But I have a hard time figuring out how they can convince themselves to believe anything other than a limited non-intervening God who pehaps started the ball rolling with the big bang, and then kicked back to see how things progressed.
The problem with this argument is that the organization of genes doesn’t show any indication of intentionality or deliberate design; in fact, it displays a jumble of mostly non-functional material (at least, in the sense of coding for proteins currently used in building body structures and hormones) that is the residue of capabilities once used and then discarded but not edited out unless it interferes with successful reproduction. And the same–or clearly similar–gene may provide entirely different function in diverse species, having been adapted from a previous use in one phenotype and evolving into some entirely different function; for instance, the ossicles (malleus, incus, and stapes bones of the middle ear) of mammals display a very clear derivation from the jaw bones of a class of prehistoric reptile called Synapsids (having a fused skull with two temporal fenestra (holes for the retinal nerve) and an integral sinus manifold. All mammals today have their hearing organs commonly derived from this source, and the fossil record shows the progression from one function to another. On the other hand, some common functions clearly have different origins; the eye, for instance, has been independently evolved over twenty different times. If your Creator were to reuse features from one species to another, why not adapt this intricate and complex design rather than built it up from scratch again and again?
Regarding the creation story (or rather stories) as portrayed in Genesis, it’s really impossible to reconcile them with current scientific knowledge of the history of the planet and life upon it without subjecting it to such a liberal translation that it becomes meaningless as any kind of record of events. This doesn’t disprove the existence of a supreme or supernatural entity, of course–at the very least, one could claim that it is all due to a string of bad translations which have muddled the original language–but it does cast doubt that any of the information in the Bible (the Old Testament, at least) can be considered and accurate or representative of account of events. (I’ll leave the Rashomon-esque nature of the Gospels of the New Testament for another discussion.) Whatever you may believe, reconciling the Bible as an objective (if occasionally apocryphal) history of the Earth with a modern knowledge of the natural sciences is an exercise in credulous translation, not in establishing the biblical account as a veritable, qualified history of creation.
Stranger
You’re not the first person to attempt this. But please ask yourself if by starting with our knowledge of what really happened you’d write something like Genesis. Also ask yourself if the liberal reading you are allowing the Bible, when applied to other creation myths, would make them match science just as well or better. The Hindus, I believe, have a very old universe in their myth.
The way science works is to construct a hypothesis based on evidence, and then attempt to disprove the hypothesis through finding more evidence or conducting experiments. When religion and science mix religion must do the same for its scientific predictions - such as the age of the earth. Do you think that anyone reading Genesis would come up with predictions on what science would find close to what it actually did find? You do not try to twist the original hypothesis into supporting what actually happened.
The right thing to do is reject the hypothesis. This only rejects Genesis as an accurate description of history. You don’t have to reject the existence of god. You are refusing to consider that your hypothesis might be faulty, and that is faith, not science.
The reason for recommending that religion not get involved with science is that religion seems to lose - its hypotheses that are testable keep getting disproved. If religion stays with stuff like the soul and the purpose of life, it is much safer.
BTW, if you’ve actually read the Bible all the way through, I don’t see how you can say all the writers are consistent. The description of God in Genesis, actively talking to people, is far different from that of Kings or Chronicles.
Genesis actually says (and I’ve read it in Hebrew in Hebrew School) the evening and the morning, the nth day. Jewish days start with the evening. You don’t say “The evening and the morning, the days of harvest.”
No, they were created on Day 4.
Since the story begins before the earth, I don’t see how you can claim it is from the point of view of someone on Earth. No, only God could dictate this, and your version contradicts what God supposedly wrote.
When you do, you might also tell us why clear genetic mistakes got reused also. Not to mention why we have junk DNA.
Do you have the slightest inclination to reconsider your beliefs in light of science, or are you going to say damn the evidence, Genesis is correct? For one second, I ask you to put aside your absolute faith and consider how well Genesis lines up with the evidence discovered. Don’t even tell us, do it to be honest with yourself. Can you? I did.
timtupp, please remember that you started this thread on false pretenses. You asked us to provide evidence for macroevolution. We did that, copiously.
You did not say that you wanted us to provide evidence to back up the creation account in the Old Testament. None of us are doing that because it can only be done under false pretenses, i.e. by cherrypicking, adapting, misinterpreting, or rejecting actual science.
Why should any of us help you in an endeavor that is intellectually dishonest?
And you also say that:
Yes, we are. That is the entire point of every response to this thread.
Many believing Christians understand that the account in Genesis is mythopoeic (from mythopoesis, a narrative genre where a fictional mythology is created by an author), exactly as every other religious tradition in humanity’s history. Most believing Jews also have this understanding, a not-inconsiderable fact given that it is their holy book, not the Christians’. Words and ideas fixed in 1300 BC should be understood as mythic renderings of then-current notions and today’s science should not be distorted to that Procrustean bed.
Saying that only atheists can possibly look at the twin accounts in Genesis and not want to twist the entire sum of humanity’s collected knowledge and wisdom to force them to fit one religion’s ancient words is insulting to almost everyone on earth, believers and non-believers alike.
I think if you re-read the OP, you’ll find that he did ask us to reconcile the Biblical creation account with evolution-- perhaps not the entire thing, but at least in terms of how evolution can explain the various “kinds” presented in Genesis.
You misunderstood me, and perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. By “biblical day”, I do not mean the use of the word “day” anywhere else in the bible but the account of creation in Genesis. I am well aware of the use of “yom” for “age” and many other words, which is why I said it “is translated 54 different ways…” But I doubt that the intention of the writer of Genesis was to describe, during the six “days” of creation, anything other than a 24 hour period per day. It is entirely a modern twist to inflate the 24 hours to an eon.
Genesis 1:3 [first day] And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Where did this light come from? If neither sun, moon nor stars were created until a few days (eons?) later, what was the source of this light? You are postulating a cloud cover with no evidence filtering light from an undisclosed source. You are piling guesses upon guesses and the result of your equation is nothing more than wishful thinking. You have assumed the biblical account is the only correct one and must distort all facts to fit. Not the way science works.
Shared genetic material suggests relationships, just the way evolution says it should. No one can ever disprove the statement that “God made it that way.” But to claim that assumes the existence of a god. Once again, you are multiplying assumptions by assumptions. Although I can’t prove that a god didn’t do it, Science has no need to postulate such an unnecessary, supernatural force.
“God did it” was a reasonable explanation ca. 2000BCE. It is not in 2000CE. We’ve come a long way, baby.
Please read up about Endogenous Retroviral Insertions - these aren’t common genetic design, they’re traces of ancestral genetic damage (the clue being that if you find two organisms with matching patterns of damage, it indicates they share a common ancestor, who suffered that original damage).
Interestingly, a very similar analysis technique is applied to spelling errors in religious manuscripts, enabling us to chart their genealogy - i.e. which scrolls were copied from which, and in what sequence.
Unfortunately if we use timtupp’s logic, there’s no reason why God didn’t use one defective design to model another.
True, it could (although let’s wait and see if he actually uses that argument) - but if you do that, there’s no point ever wondering about anything at all. No point ever asking any question, because nothing might be exactly as it seems - it might all be tricksy God-setups.
That’s really the crux of the matter here - are we allowed to say that things look the way they are, because they are the way they are, or do we have to continually wring our hands with worry that they might only be pretending to be the way they are?
One thing I will say though - in all my dealings with creationists, I’ve only ever found the statement “well, I don’t find the evidence all that convincing” to actually mean I’ve not really examined, appreciated or understood the evidence in any depth or detail.
Agreed. The fossil evidence so abundantly supports the theory of evolution, that it’s absurd to say it leaves one unconvinced. The recently discovered fossil, Tiktaalik, is as good a “missing link” as there ever will be. And there are plenty more.
This thread got split pretty early on into two areas of discussion: macroevolution and biblical accuracy. Timtupp, are you satisfied with the original question about macroevolution?
If there’s more discussion about that, I’d like to see it here soon, and we can carry on a discussion of biblical accuracy in another thread. Or, if the macroevolution discussion is pretty much done, we can continue the biblical stuff here. It’s your call. I’d like to join in the biblical part, and your ideas about its accuracy, prophecy, and historicity.
A creationist must believe that God is responsible for fossils - directly or indirectly. He admits that people wrote the Bible, however inspired. He must therefore say that evidence of the old earth and evolution, placed there by god, isn’t as convincing as what some guy wrote., or that God was fooling us, like in Pratchett’s Strata. Seems odd to me.
I dunno - seems to me like it simply created TWO missing links (on on either side of it) where there was previously only ONE! 
Yes, “gaps” in the record. The more fossils we find, the more gaps we create! :smack:
Yes, we’ve discovered so many transitional fossils that there are now Billions of Missing Links. And growing all the time.