As usual, I find myself in general agreement with your excellent essay/posts. Also, as usual, (lacking, rergetfully, the grace with which you address those with differing views) I have entered the discussion by refuting something that I found to be distressing...
For some reason, the binary "my way or the highway" position-taking that pervades these "crevo" threads offends me more and more as I proceed beyond my "threescore and ten" milestone...
Blessings to all -- but be advised that a 3/4-centenarian. believer+scientist curmudgeon has joined the discussion! '-)
I treasure you as my dear brother in Christ and also as our trusted expert in the sciences. And so I'm tickled pink that you and I are on the same wavelength in our understanding of these Scriptures!
By the way, I'm right behind you in the years department, closing in on the big 66. LOLOL!
And yes, it is very difficult to have a discussion on any crevo thread when the players refuse to meet on the 50 yard line. But I know spirited irish as a brilliant and eloquent seeker and I'm fairly confident that hanging around the goalpost was not her intent but rather laying out a key philosophical/theological basis for Young Earth Creationism.
TXnMA: For some reason, the binary “my way or the highway” position-taking that pervades these “crevo” threads
Spirited: In other words, the way to God is a highway, particularly a billions of years old evolutionary escalator, rather than the strait and narrow path as He said.
You publicly broadcast your “upset” at my post to AG. If your beliefs were sure, if there was confidence in them, there would be neither upset nor compulsion to attack the bearer of the message.
Whether it causes upset or not, the fact remains that when applied to the Bible evolutionary thinking inverts God’s Revelation. For example, rather than man falling from a state somewhat less than perfect, evolutionary thinking speaks of man evolving upward, away from his supposedly millions or billions of years old emergence from primordial matter.
So in just this one example we see that evolutionary thinking negates the Fall, sin, and man’s need for a Savior as well as making God the Father responsible for death and suffering. This is a decidedly Gnostic view.
Evolutionary thinking is neither new nor particularly scientific. The very ancient Enuma Elish, though mainly concerned with the exploits of Marduk, is in fact an Assyrian-Babylonian evolutionary cosmogony speaking of how all things evolved out of pre-existing primordial matter, that is, a watery abyss. Moving forward to ancient Egypt we find the Sun-God Ra speaking of how he emerged out of primordial matter he calls Nu.
In the post-flood world Noah remained in the East and established worship of the true God while his son journeyed to the West, to the land of Shinar, location of Babylonia, Marduk, and the Enuma Elish.
Though initially attracted to evolutionary thinking C.S. Lewis rejected it later on after connecting it to a revival of paganism.
Our God is a living Creator Who created ex nihilo, meaning that He called all things into existence. The early Church Fathers affirmed creation ex nihilo and taught against evolutionary thinking, known in their day as reincarnation and metempsychosis.
To ridicule so-called “crevos” as you put it, is to ridicule the Genesis account, God’s Revealation in other words. It would be better by far to be a seeker of truth, even though truth tastes bitter.