If your argument hangs on your premise, then it’s wrong. Or I don’t exist. Whichever.
Your exact point here is unclear, but you seem to be attempting the fallacy of the undivided middle.
Let’s just clarify this: are you saying that becasue the process of evolution itself lacks goals or an endpoint, that means some greater power such as “Fate” or “God” cannot use the process to achieve their for their endpoint?
If that is what you are saying then it seems you must also believe that it is impossible for a man to plant a garden on barren ground. After all a garden is just the first stage of the process of ecological succession. And succession does not have a goal or endpoint.
Let me prarphrase you and see whethr you still want to adopt htis position:
Do you understand how someone can believe all of that to be true while still accepting that a directing intelligence can alter the environment to produce parks and gardens? Because I believe that, as do all other ecologists.
I really think that you are running dangerously close to an undistributed middle here. It is possible to believe that process is able to operate chaotically and undirected, yet still be directed by an intelligence as required.
Why does a Christian need to believe that? Nowhere in the bible does it say that God intended to create humans, so where are you getting this from?
To present just one of thousands of possible alternatives that, AFAIK, is perfectly in keeping with the doctrine of the largest Christian sect: God creates the world and sets evolution in place. He does this with the intention of creating beings that are capable of recieving a human soul. He doesn’t care what those creatures look like, he just wants them to be capable of recieving a human soul. When such a creature arrives he then implants the soul. In this case the creature happend to be a bipedal primate, in another, hypothetical reality it may have been a giant squid.
What in that scenario conflicts with the beliefs of the Roman Catholic church? Where does it say that Catholics have to believe that God intended to create humans in any way that conflicts with physical evolution?
I think this is the point that you fail tounderstand. RC doctrine says that soul and the body are disticnt. Physical evolution probably took place but God was then required to implant the soul. There is nothing in there that says that God intended to create humans in there current physical form. And evolution can only adress the physical form. Hence no contradition whatsoever is required.
Again, where is this in the Bible or the teachings of the majority of Christian sects? IOW…
CITE!?
Yeah, it is. Just as it possible to believe in succession while simultaneously believing that I can make pies out of wild raspberries.
You seem to have a peice of non sequitur stuck in your argument. It seems to run:
Evolution is chaotic
???
God can’t use the process or the products.
But why? What is the link here? What relevance does the essentially chaotic nature of evolution have to the ability of an intelligence to use its products or even to direct it?
Just because a process is chaotic doesn’t mean that it can’t be steered by an intelligence, or that an intelligence can’t harvest the fruit of the process without ever stering it.
I just don’t get this, and neither do the majority of Christians. If I plant seeds and then let those seeds grow as they will, can I not harvest the plants for compost when they mature? Do I really need to have a specific pre-planned endpoint?
Or you’re not a Christian
ETA: Not saying that Rand Rover is right in his argument, just that your conclusions were not the only ones one could make from the statement “It is impossible to be a Christian that accepts the theory of evolution” and the fact that a person named **Liberal **says he is a Christian who believes in evolution
Yup. That “personal” bit generally comes from the bible thumpers. While thumping their Inerrant KJV’s! Those folks don’t really consider Catholics to be Christian. After all, the RC church (AKA Scarlet Woman) has no problem with Evolution…
(Now I’m picturing Rand Rover, thumping his copy of Atlas Shrugged. Does it have ribbons sewn into the binding, for marking extra special parts?)
Not at all. Some don’t even think he was supernatural at all, just a preacher whose supposed teachings they want to follow.
Weeelll . . . not to split hairs, but I’ve always thought such folks are extremely selective on the supposed parts they choose to believe and the supposed parts
they choose to ignore (specifically re what Jesus said). One could say one is a Buddhist, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu all at the same time if one just chooses the bits one likes out of each and claims that makes one a member of each religion.
Millions of Christians believe in evolution. But no True Scotsman does!
While you’re right in saying that there’s no fixed endpoint to evolution, it does allow for arbitrarily stable equilibria, I think. So, one could just say that humanity exists as such an equilibrium, that that was what god intended to do, and that the world’s simply gonna end before the equilibrium conditions change (or if one doesn’t want to believe in divine eschatology, that those conditions continue indefinitely).
While it’s said that we’re ‘created in god’s image’, there’s plenty of interpretative wiggle room: there might not be an exclusive ‘god’s image’ to that end that if the dominant intelligent species were a bunch of lizards, they might just as well be ‘in god’s image’, since the phrase doesn’t appeal to outward appearance; our ‘soul’ could be what’s ‘in god’s image’; or anything along those lines.
So a Christian who also believes in evolution would only have to believe that god set that whole thing in motion with the express intent to create a people able to serve as vessels for whatever it is that we (well, some of us) consider to be our souls, and he’d be fine.
Point seven of nine. God saw the dinosaurs worshiping false idols and did smiteth them with a large rock so that humans could evolve.
Who is to say if not I? I believe that Christ is the Son of God, that He died for the sins of the world, that He rose from the dead three days later, that He reigns over God’s kingdom for eternity, that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and that He is both fully man and fully God. I accept that biological organisms evolve from less complex forms to more complex forms, that new species emerge over time, that the earth is billions of years old, and that natural selection is primary among the mechanisms by which creatures evolve. It seems to me that saying I am a Christian who accepts the theory of evolution is a reasonable statement.
First of all, the claim is self-evidently false. There are Christians who believe in evolution. Therefore, it is possible to be a Christian who believes in evolution. That’s really the end of the argument as phrased in your OP. It’s factually wrong, and provable by objective evidence; millions and millions of Christians that accept the theory of evolution as fact.
You’re engaging in a number of logical fallacies here; the fallacy of the excluded middle and the No True Scotsman fallacy have already been cited, but fundamentally what you’re doing is begging the question through selective definition. Basically, what your OP does it say that Christians cannot believe in evolution because you personally define Christianity as being something that cannot coexist with a belief in evolution; so, basically, your argument is this:
Christians cannot believe in evolution because Christians cannot believe in evolution.
It’s a very unconvincing argument to say the least. As I said at the beginning of the OP, it is objectively false - millions of Christians believe in evolution, and the only way to explain that away is to play with definitions and say “well, they’re not Christians, then. No True Scotsman blah blah blah.”
We could engage in discussion all day about how Christianity and evolution can be squared up. To me it just seems sort of obvious that if there is an omnipotent God and He chose to create life through the mechanics of evolution, then His decision in this regard is clearly beyond the capacity of humans to fully comprehend. Why did He create us through evolution? I don’t know, nobody knows, and it’s crazy to think you can understand an omnipotent God. It’s like complaining about why he created neutrons or plate tectonics or made ponies pretty. The vastness and complexity of His creation is His to understand fully, and if he wanted to make us out of apes, well, it’s God’s call.
Note to anyone trying to force science and religion to be at odds: They are not natural enemies. They have separate domains in human thought. Each tries to answer a different question–science tries to tell us how, religion seeks to tell us why.
(Personally, I’d think that “God’s image” refers to the mind, not the body. God can look however he wants to look–it’s reason and morality that separates man from animal)
The OP engages in the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.
To clarify, if someone says they are a christian that believes in evolution, then I’m not saying they aren’t a true christian, i’m saying that what they believe in is not the theory of evolution–it’s just a watered down version. This claridication should satisfy Liberal and render Rickjay’s idiotic post largely moot.
Thanks for the helpful posts. I’ve changed my mind on this, but I still feel that I have a point to a point–i.e., the christian version of evolution is like food with no taste or something, it looks the same but all of the explanatory power has been sucked away. I’ll respond more fully later when I get more time.
Was going to post on Charles Darwin’s own early Christianity, but screwed up the timeline between his becoming a Theist and writing the Origin of Species. Well, crap.
You missed the OP’s point. His point is if human existence is a plan by an omnipotent being, it’s not evolution. If God planned for us to exist and created “stuff”, laws of physics, eliminated random chance, chose which traits nature would select instead of nature taking its course, etc.- that’s not “the theory of evolution.”
Thank you! Exactamundo.
I totally read this in a Father Guido Sarduchi voice.
Awesome!
You know, come to think of it, there are some people (myself included) who feel that God is very ‘hands off’. We take what we are given, and work to improve ourselves. That isn’t to say that He never intercedes, but that most of the time he’s content to let free will takes its course. Maybe evolution is the goal–there’s possibly a specified endpoint, but it is up to us to get there. For some odd reason I keep flashing to Clarke’s Childhood’s End…
(Yeah, it’s kind of a work in progress)
Rand, I think I understand your point now. It does make sense in a way.
Sounds like Theism, which it’s likely Darwin ascribed to at the time he wrote The Origin of Species. [sub]There, I got to use that post after all.[/sub]