This is mainly for Christians who believe in evolution, but any can participate.
I was raised as a Christian and have always believed that Jesus died for our sins and was our redeemer. However, as I learned more and more about evolution I saw that it had to a fact. And I came to the question - Can the Fall of humans be reconciled with evolution? I don’t see any way that it can. And if there was no Fall, what do we need Jesus to redeem us from? Without the Fall of man what would the purpose of the 2nd person of Trinity becoming flesh, suffering, being humiliated, and killed be? Why would it be necessary? If sin and death were not brought into the world by man why do we need a redeemer? What state would man be restored to by Jesus’ sacrifice?
I would like to know how Christians who believe evolution is a fact answer these questions?
Don’t have time for a long answer, but I take it that Adam represents a point at which God deemed human beings morally accountable, revealed himself to them, and we chose not to obey. Whether or not Adam was a literal individual human being or a metaphor for all humanity is another question; I lean to “Metaphor.”
Keep in mind that believing in evolution in general doesn’t mean one must see it as a perfectly linear progression; plenty of scientists see apparent “jumps” in the fossil record where changes happened relatively quickly. It’s possible that the Genesis account deals with “Man” (Homo Sapiens) emerging suddenly, through divine intervention, from a sub-human species (neanderthal, etc). That explanation would also cover some of the other seemingly knotty passages in Genesis.
I don’t think we can answer this question unless you tell us why you think the concept of evolution is inconsistent with the Fall. What is your problem here?
Because there was never a time when man was free from death. Also there was never a time when man didn’t have to work. Birth existed before the Fall. Man was not physically perfect before the Fall. Death was in the world before the Fall.
The notion that the world was perfect and that nothing died before Adam and Eve ate the fruit is not a standard Christian belief, but one found amongst Biblical literalists who attempt to use it to knock down evolution.
To make religion and science cohabitate peacefully, you have to give up any hope for any shred of literalism in Genesis at least up to the calling of Abraham. If you take all of it as a metaphor, which it undoubtedly is, then there’s no contradiction between the words and reality.
The first two statements are not necessarily true. Adam could have been the first human–who is a product of evolution–and was given special gifts thereupon. As for “physical perfection”–that’s one of those Western theological quirks. My own Church doesn’t indulge in that.
The trick to reconcilling science and religion is to not take religious texts literally. Religion (at least to me) is about faith and emotions, both my own and those of humanity as a whole. Using the Bible as a science book completely misses the point.
I view the “fall of man” story as an allegorical explanation for the tendency of people to, despite genuinely trying, fail to live up to commandments put forth in the rest of the Bible (I speak primarily of the “love your god, love your neighbor commandments,” as opposed to the “Don’t eat cheeseburgers” commandments).
If you want to reconcile modern knowledge with the Bible, try reading some of John Spong’s stuff. Like this.
John Mace: I disagree. I believe in science, and am not at all ignorant of it (I have a degree in Electrical Engineering), and I also hold religious beliefs. I haven’t abandoned either.
Yup-- they’re “knotty” all right, and daffy notions like that do precisely nothing to reconcile them with reality.
Why, pray tell, would an omnipotent God need the “head start” of a neanderthal in order to produce his final working version of “man” in homo sapiens?
:rolleyes:
I thought he just “up and made” man, you know, out of dirt-- 'cause he’s god and he can do that…after all, Genesis doesn’t say that god “improved man”-- it says he created him. That’s it-- that’s the scripture you’re stuck with, 2,000 years old and counting, and with no mechanism to update, falsify, or correct it. Creative attempts to spin and interpret these outdated fairy tales puts them through contortions that they simply can’t withstand in the light of objective analysis.
Why not just leave them behind, and live in the real world?
Note that I said “full pursuit” of one… If you take a completely scientific view and pursue religion, you cannot end up with anything more than a vague belief in some vague, passive deity that bears no resemblance to the Christian God. If you interject an active, omnipotent God into science, then one can accept, at will, any phenomenon that violates the laws of physics.
Nothing personal, Metacom. I don’t mean to imply that religious people are ignorant-- many are clearly not.
That’s the “The Bible is a Science Book!!!” way to interpret it, and I think it misses the point completely.
Here’s a different way to interpret the first creation story in Genesis: more then 2 thousand years ago, someone who lived in a time, culture, and location completely different from my own contemplated the magnificent universe that he lived in and was filled with awe. He was inspired to write a powerful narrative–using language that’s still beautiful two centuries and a translation or two later–that described God creating everything he knew of. I believe the most important facet of the story he wrote: that God created the universe. The sense of being humbled before the universe and God is what has transcended time and culture, from that author to myself. The scientific details are irrelevant, and are obviously going to change depending on how much the author knows of the universe.
Well, unfortunately, the “bible as a science book” approach is hardly some strawman I built up of my own accord… (It may not be YOUR adopted approach, in which my comments would be more precisely directed at biblical literists than more liberal Christians such as yourself, metacom.) "
But the point remains that it is a very real force; the pursuit of the “bible as science” has led to real-world absurdities such as the tap-dancing school boards have to go through over the battle to teach evolution in science class.
You dismiss the scientific details in the bible as “irrelevant” although in my mind, they serve a very important purpose: they cast doubt on the authenticity of the whole enchilada.
In other words, if the bible says the earth is 6000 years old and we later prove it isn’t… and the bible says there was a global flood, which has since been proven to have been impossible, and Genesis lists an order of life forms being created which turns out to be fictional… and so on… why place any faith on the important stuff like the Resurrection?
There has to be a better answer than “because I WANT that important stuff to be true”, doesn’t there?
Exactly my point. If you pick and choose which “facts” from the Bible you wish to believe, what is the point in picking any at all? I don’t see any difference between a physical “fact” like the flood and a “spiritual” fact like original sin. The latter are just murkier and more easier to claim that thye haven’t been “disproven”.
The word “fact” has multiple definitions. One is “a concept whose truth can be proved” and another is “a piece of information about circumstances that exist or events that have occured.” I think the phrase “physical fact” uses the word “fact” in the first sense, and the phrase “spiritual fact” uses the word “fact” and in the second sense. The two definitions are fundamentally different: What I feel spiritually isn’t something that I can prove to anyone.
I don’t pick and choose what “facts” to believe, because I don’t believe the Bible presents facts. I think the Bible was written over a very long period of time by many different people, each with their own agenda. I don’t read it looking for facts and definitive answers: there are none. I read it because, when interpreted allegorically, I think it offers profound insights on the things that science has nothing to do with. The act of interpreting and thinking about it is what I value, not just reciting the superficial answers it contains. As far as I’m concerned, the Bible is “Rashomon” only it substitutes truths of human existence for a rape scene.
Heck, even the author of John saw fit to poke at people who interpreted things literally:
I think one of the biggest problems people have when they consider religion is the whole idea/notion of some kind of “magic”.
Never in the bible does God simply “will” something to exist. Before their was an earth there was light, THEN there were stars and THEN there were planets, etc…
When he creates Adam he doesnt just wave an enormous arm and Adam magically appears, instead he must use dirt from the planet and add air (earth, oxygen, water and all the other ingredients for life born from reactions that occured during the births of stars)
How would you grow a human? According to evolution you have to start with a strand of dna, and coax it to replicate itself, eventually they begin to combine and grow larger forms, changes are introduced slowly through adaptation to changes in the environment, maybe a few cells drift a little closer to the surface of the pond where sunlight provides energy that the cells can “eat” as more cells grow here they evolve more efficient means of utilizing that energy, or they begin replicate without disjoining and find that they are more efficient as a 2 celled creature. A few of these 2 celled creature maybe drift back to the original group and in a mixing of dna maybe produce yet another form. Etc… etc…
The bible is really not that clear on time particularly in Genesis, As has been pointed out before, how long is a day in a universe that does not even have stars yet?
Anyway my point is that science is HOW God would have had to make the world.
Perhaps the story of Adam and Eve is simply when God gave the life form MAN a “soul”, depending on what you consider a “soul” to be whether it is self awareness or intelligence or the ability to know emotions or all or none of these. Maybe Star Trek’s Data had it right when he looked for the human “essence” in our sense of humor.
OK. But that is a different topic than what the OP is asking. In particular, the OP is asking how to square the concept of “original sin” with evolution. If one chooses not to accept “original sin”, then there is no issue. If one chooses to accept that “original sin” exists (and that it didn’t exist at an earlier time), then one is picking up that “fact” from the Bible.
Of course, this is all predicated on there being such a thing as a soul that has an existance sperate from the body. That’s the real basic tenet that must be accepted for there to be any meaning to religion (in the Judeo/Christian sense).
It think it does apply to the OP. Instead of viewing the fall from grace as a literal event, view it has an allegory that explains part of being human. It’s not the story that matters, it’s the “spiritual fact” that the story is trying to convey: Doing bad things is a fundamental part of human nature. That’s what we need redemption from.
True, but doesn’t that beg the question: “redemption from what and for what purpose?” One only needs redeption in the context of an immortal soul. And where does that conept come from?
