Posted on 04/04/2009 1:47:03 AM PDT by gondramB
I'd like to ask. I promise I don't mean this in an unkind way. I would really like to know.
Suppose the Freepers who believe that humans were created in their current form by God (whether 6,000 years ago or much longer)....
Suppose you became convinced that instead man had developed from lower organisms over billions of years.
Would that have to change any other core beliefs - that God directed man, The God came to Abraham and chose his children; that God sent us His son, that we are to follow the teachings of Jesus - particularly that we are to love the lord and love each other and ask forgiveness in his Son's name when we do wrong?
I speak only for myself.
My understanding of scripture, particularly the Torah, is that it is a multi-layered writing, of which the literal story of creation is only the simplest level.
Deeper reading into the Torah reveals understanding that makes the literal accuracy of the simple story unimportant. Remember that the author is writing from a perspective outside of time.
That being said, evolution as it is presented by Darwin’s followers, is an unacceptable belief, simply because it is the most inelegant, least likely and most improbable accounting for what we see in our world.
In addition to not passing the smell test, it is (despite what its adherents claim) not a real theory, because it is not demonstrable or repeatable.
People believing in a six day creation look far less silly than people believing in spontaneous punctuated equilibrium.
The Bible exists more for edification than explanation. If you are a real student of science, I would guess that there are things about evolutionary “theory” that make you at least uneasy.
That is a danger, and I see it coming out of the evo-atheists all the time
I have a hard time reconciling that with Gen 2:7 “the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. “
Age of the earth and 6 day creation aside, Scripture is so clear about God creating man as a separate act of creation, as with the other forms of life being created.
More later when I can think a little more clearly. This is too early for me.....
So true man.
If evolution is true then Jesus was either wrong or a liar and therefor, not the unblemished Lamb who was able to take away our sins.
If you believe in evolution, you cannot turn around and say that you believe that Jesus is the Savior.
They are mutually exclusive.
> I’ve never had that problem because I was a science student before I became a Christian and it has never seemed a conflict.
I am in much the same boat as you, FRiend — tho’ I got there in a different way. I started out as a committed Christian (and so remain), then I visited Drumheller Alberta and saw and touched the dinosaur bones there. That blew away the 6,000 timeframe year idea permanently and forever.
Then I moved to New Zealand and was confronted by The Ultimate Problem that proves at least part of the Evolutionary theory beyond a shadow of all reasonable doubt: how did New Zealand’s flightless birds, the weta and the tuatara come to be found only here and nowhere else?
The two theories are not incompatible. Evolution explains how things happened and suggests a likely timeframe, and Creation explains Who was responsible for making things happen, and His Divine Purpose for making these things happen.
But what is patently and provably false is that Creation took 6,000 years only and without the evolutionary process. I’d even go a step further and confidently assert that either the Great Flood did not cover the entire globe, or Noah’s Ark had remarkable navigational capabilities and modern petrol engines, or at the very least steam power and a regular series of coaling stations between Turkey and the South Pacific. It would also need to have been capable of navigating either the Cape of Good Hope or the Cape Horn intact: once on the way here, and once on the way back.
Science is and always has been the Bible Scholar’s best friend. We are foolish to kick against the pricks.
I do not understand it, myself. They think they “have arrived”. If they just took a moment to think about the things they don’t know, like the vastness of the ocean depths. Or how about they just erase everything from their knowledge base that is “theory”. Just have an honest moment with themselves and erase everything that is not verifiable in a laboratory today. But they are consumed with kicking out God because they love their sin much much more. They are not interested in truly serving others, only themselves and a select few. These are the people who brought us abortion.
> You go first — When you know you are just one or two heart beats away from the end of your life and you are taking your last breaths, and you know the end is near — Who are you praying to, “an organism or to God?”
Naturally, as a Christian who also believes in Evolution, I’d pray to God. The provable fact that God used the Evolutionary process to create Creation does absolutely nothing to the necessity and fact of the existence of God Himself.
Otherwise it is necessary to believe that Evolution happened as a result of random and improbable events: not impossible, because given enough time any random event can cause any random result, but provably Evolution didn’t happen by random chance.
Years ago I could see that point of view until I really looked at what they were presenting as evidence
But why would I become convinced of that? That's like asking, what "would happen if you became a totally different person than who you are today?" I don't know that such a thing can be answered.
> Years ago I could see that point of view until I really looked at what they were presenting as evidence
Much of what is used to prove Evolution is silly, I will grant. But The Question has yet to be answered to my satisfaction: New Zealand’s flightless birds cannot fly, neither can they swim. Neither can the Tuatara, which is a reptile tho’ not a lizard (the last of the Dinosaurs). Neither can the Weta. Given that Noah’s Flood covered the entire earth, and given that New Zealand is in the middle of the South Pacific about as far from Mt Ararat as one can possibly get while still being on this same planet, how did these animals get to New Zealand: they are found here, and nowhere else on this planet?
No Creationist has been able to answer that question satisfactorily, without compromising the Genesis record.
You can't believe in evolution and believe the bible is a true document of the Word of God.
If you cling to evolution, you must let go of God.
Study the doctrines of the anthropology of man. The materialist perspective is also closely associated with Montanism, Federalism, Gnosticism, and denial of the human soul or spirit as discernible from physical entities.
Dualism, advances to recognize the Body and the Soul, a condition which Scripture very well recognizes and identifies with the natural man.
The trichotomous perspective of anthropology, discerns a body, soul, and a human spirit as being the man created in God’s image.
So it is possible to be Christian and be a scientist who studies the creation, observes physical laws, and rationally uses that knowledge in the exercise of his gifts. On the contrary, there are those who identify science with a materialist perspective, denying the separate existence of souls or spirit.
This addresses the topic of scientific creationism, as opposed to theologic creationism. Theologic creationism, further explores and discerns the origin of human life of the soul.
Tertullian and the Montanists held a position considered heretical by Aquinas and Jerome, that souls have always existed and are transferred to the human body by materialist mechanisms in the semen, also known as a Seminal perspective of the origin of life. Tertullian therefore promoting the perspective of transfer of a soul, coined the term Traducianism or transfer of the soul.
The Traducian view counters the Federal view of the origin of human life. The Federal view, based upon Rom 5 and 1stCor15, holds that Adam was the Federal base of guilt in the human race and the natural man is imputed with the same guilt from Adam at the point of birth of each human, namely at the emission from the womb, not at conception. This is also closely associated with the theological creationist perspective.
> The existence of unique species is a better argument for special creation than spontaneous evolution.
OK, go for it — I’m all ears. How did these animals get here, in New Zealand?
There is another important aspect when studying this topic.
It boils down to primal causes and the object upon which one’s faith is actually devoted.
Is the object of faith, that which God Himself has provided for salvation or is it His Creation?
Some in our generation have been trained to place a higher priority upon what we can judge ourselves independent of any other source, instead of placing faith in Christ first and accepting His Word. Attempting to use reason as an arbiter of faith, begs the question. Either our faith in through Christ or in something other than Him.
It’s been said that all one needs is a smidgen more faith, than no faith whatsoever, to have a saving faith. Anything added to faith alone in Christ alone, voids that faith as a saving faith. Once saved, God performs His work and we are always saved, though continually sanctified only as we remain in fellowship with Him.
I have no idea.
You are the one stating that this proves evolution.
So, how did these animals evolve in New Zealand and nowhere else?
If Genesis had described the creation of man in the way you posit, everything else that follows from God loving man, man’s sin and rebellion, and Christ’s death would be true. But Genesis describes man as being more or less directly “hand-made” by God. No evolutionary antecedents! God breathed life directly into man’s nostrils. he became a living soul.
The described previous creation “cycles” paints God as being a bit more stand offish, “Let the Earth bring forth...” and so on implying Divine command and imputed power with matter and energy rippling, crackling and “bringing forth” in response to God’s word! It could be argued it took a long time for some of these commands to “bring forth” as it were.
Yet you asked about the creation of man in possible relation to previous evolutionary antecedents. Genesis doesn’t allow you that kind of wiggle room.God’s relationship with man was intimate and unique, he was given tasks to tend the Garden of Eden and to name the aninmals.
God had a personal and even emotional stake in his interations with Adam. The events describing Adam and Eve and the introduction of sin into the world directly lead, thru some thousands of years, to the coming of Christ the King of YOUR salvation(you did describe your self a Christian).
If anything, there has been devolution for as you ought to have learned by now what Paul says”The whole of creation groans under a curse as in labor” that curse being sin! Now note what he says...”the whole of creation” meaning Earth, planets, stars,galaxies, everything!
Now God will lift that curse someday and all matter and creation will express the maximum of their designed capabilities, including man!(”If a man dies before 100 years old, he will be said to have been cursed” as the Old Testament says) You think the giant redwoods are actually expressing their total potentials; well perhaps they are in this present diseased matrix of matter/energy we call creation. Just think of what they’ll be like when God lifts the curse of sin and death off of the universe!
So is thinking.
The arrogant are easily offended, then react when their thinking is frustrated by the thought of another not matching their perspective.
It is simple. The 'god' of evolution is not the same Heavenly Father that predestined Abraham and his children. A person cannot serve two masters.
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