Posted on 06/26/2008 10:09:30 PM PDT by Ethan Clive Osgoode
PRINCETON, NJ -- There is a significant political divide in beliefs about the origin of human beings, with 60% of Republicans saying humans were created in their present form by God 10,000 years ago, a belief shared by only 40% of independents and 38% of Democrats.
Between 43% and 47% of Americans have agreed during this 26-year time period with the creationist view that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so. Between 35% and 40% have agreed with the alternative explanation that humans evolved, but with God guiding the process, while 9% to 14% have chosen a pure secularist evolution perspective that humans evolved with no guidance by God.
(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...
You mean evolution?
Christianity is based upon the notion that Jesus died for the sins of man, and that personal salvation and eternal life is obtained through acceptance of Jesus as the savior. Central to this belief is the story of the creation of man/woman in Genesis, which describes how the naughty Adam and Eve ticked off God, the result of which was “original sin” as Christians call it. Jesus provided all of man with salvation from the “original sin” of Adam. This is well-documented in Scripture. Jesus himself wasa Jew, of course, and he is described in the Bible as a believer in, and teacher of, “the Law,” which of course was the Torah, which contains the Adam and Eve fable.
Thus Christianity is premised upon the link between Adam and Jesus. The Catholic Catechism, for example, describes how the Adam and Eve story must be accepted literally, not just metaphorically. Without Adam’s fall from grace, there is no reason for a Savior.
Granted, Christians who do not believe that the Bible is literally true can rationalize that the creation of man described in Genesis is metaphor, and that God actually created bacteria and left it to natural selection to work out the gradual evolution of man about 16 billion years later, but that doesn’t seem to show much interest on God’s part, nor especially does it explain original sin and a need for a Savior.
I keep hearing and have often wondered, where in the Bible is slavery condoned?
What I do know is that the OT shows Israel in a repetitive cycle of idolatry, bondage, repentence and redemption, but I am looking for chapters and verses to say that God condoned slavery. From what I have read thus far, it seemed more like a consequence to idolatry.
I have never come across a condonement of slavery, so if anyone can lead me to it, I would appreciate finding it.
“Also, samples of meteorites and material from the moon have also proven to be extremely old. How do you explain this?”
Or what about Mars? It’s no longer a mysterious light in the night sky: there have been so many space probes sent there in recent decades that it’s become a fairly familiar place. It’s obvious that Mars was once very different from what it is now (thicker atmosphere, liquid water on the surface, an extensive geological history) but not much has happened there for a very long time. Among its features are an enormous extinct volcano that would have taken a long time to build up and a huge canyon system in which you could hide the Grand Canyon and lose it. Are there Young Mars Creationists who claim it was created 6000 years ago along with the Earth and its geology is the result of a planet-wide flood, too? (And with no sinners to drown?)
As for Evolution itself... according to my 1990s Funk & Wagnalls, there are 800,000 known species of insects (compared to about 4500 mammals), with probably many more to be discovered. 250,000 of them are beetles alone. I can’t quite get my mind around the Creator sitting up the night before Creation inventing one bug after another when surely only a few would do. Evolution as a way to automate the process, as well as to give species a way to adapt to local changes in the environment, seems more logical to me.
You wrote: “Although, after God created the earth (in six days), then, Adam fell: Scripture does not record how long it was between creation being done and Adam falling. It could have been any length of time, I suppose.”
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Here’s your problem with that. Adam was the first man according to Genesis. Bible historians reconstruct the geneology of Adam’s descendants, leading to the conclusion that Adam was created about 6000 years ago. Genesis says the first man and woman were created on the sixth day. Now explain to me how you can have billions of years of macroevolution in 6000 years.
Personal beliefs aside, it is easy to reconcile logically.
A quick summary: Genesis would have us believe that Adam was created as an adult. Why not the same for the whole cosmos? Sure it looked like Adam was 20 or 30 years old or whatever. Why would the universe not look old too? Heck before Darwin and even before people realized how long it takes light to travel from the stars to the Earth erudite Jews and Christians supposed that the universe appeared infinitely old.
The thing that is hard to reconcile after the big bang theory is Naturalism. But you got a lot of "scientist" trying with thought experiments about multiple universes and any other form of infinitely old cosmos...now that is a real challenge of reconciliation if you ask me!
Reason leads us to something that transcends this universe, avoiding this conclusion is a desperate work of intellectual jujitsu.
You explained it simply beautifully.
If I may add one more thing that is important to understand.
There is so much historically to consider to see the attack on Biblical Christianity over the past 150 or so years. For anyone questioning, you have to understand Marx, Darwin, and the organization of leftist groups in the early 20th century and their agenda. They had to first attack the foundation of Christianity. That foundation was Genesis. And that was attacked in the 1920s with the Scopes Trial.
Do you know what organization was behind the suit?
I don’t mean to explain it. I don’t know.
I’m just saying, for those who aren’t familiar with Genesis, that we are specifically told God made the earth and all within it in six days.
Then Adam fell.
But Genesis does not record the length of time between creation and Adam’s fall.
Is Adam’s age at his death recorded? If so, then we’d know. I’m going to have to look that up.
I came across something interesting one day.
Take your own geneology and double it with each generation.
Go back just 40 generations and see how many people would have to be in the population of the world who would be related to you alone.
Something interesting happens the further back you go....and I think it impacts how old the earth is.
“Do you have to believe it literally or can you accept it as allegory?”
I guess the honest question we must ask it: Is it written as literal history or as an allegory?
The Bible is a big book with lots of recognizable literary styles: historical narrative, prophecy, poetry, analogies, similes.
Jesus, for instance, said “I am the vine, you are the branches.” Did He mean he was literally made of wood and planted in the soil? No, he was speaking figuratively, and often spoke in parables and allegories. The form is easily recognizable and not subject to much debate.
The Psalms use simile and so forth “Lebanon’s hills like young antelopes start. . .”. Of course the hills are not antelopes, a simile is being made. Not much controversy there.
Prophecies use a lot of figurative language. Isaiah 53: “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearer is silent, So He opened not His mouth. . .” this is a prophecy of Christ, who John also calls the Lamb of God, although he is obviously a man.
However, Genesis is written in a strict historical narrative from beginning to end. On this day this happened. The next day this happened. We have births, deaths, names, ages, wars and people movements, archealogical references (this city, this country, this mountain) and basic human history (this king, this law, this servant) recorded in a straightforward manner. To say it’s an allegory would be disingenuous in my opinion.
Indeed true. On this very theme I posted The Voices of Babel in the relgion forum.
That foundation was Genesis. And that was attacked in the 1920s with the Scopes Trial.
You can get the Scopes trial textbook (Hunter's Civic Biology) and William Bryan's Menace of Darwinism from my FR homepage.
"...anatomically there is a greater difference between the lowest type of monkey and the highest type of ape than there is between the highest type of ape and the lowest savage..." - Hunter, Civic Biology, pg.195"Hundreds of families such as those described above exist to-day, spreading disease, immorality, and crime to all parts of this country. The cost to society of such families are very severe. They not only do harm to others by corrupting, stealing, or spreading disease, but they are actually protected and cared for by the state out of public money... They take from society, but give nothing in return. They are true parasites. If such people were lower animals, we would probably kill them off to prevent them from spreading..." - Hunter, Civic Biology, pg.263
Adam was around 900 years old when he died. I know, sounds unreasonable to the non believer.
Since Moses wrote Genesis, he was not around at the same time as Adam.
Jesus says in one of the Gospels to “pay attention to the words of Moses”. This statement alone has to recognize anyone who believes in Him to reconcile themselves to believe Genesis.
Interesting. You have freepmail.
Citation please
Forgive them Lord they know not what they do......
Duane T. Gish’s book, The Fossils Still Say No, describes in detail the blatant lack of evidence for macroevolution.
Gish explains convincingly how the fossil evidence is consistent with creationism.
Gish uses published quotes from prominent evolution scientists.
It’s remarkable to see how these scientists come so close to acknowledging the impossibility of evolution based on the fossil record.
If you go to my FR page you can download Evolution and Adaptation by Thomas Hunt Morgan, and watch a prominant evolutionist drive many very sharp pointy wooden stakes through the vamipre of Natural Selection.
Curiously, the (satirical) posted image includes the Michaelangelo "Creation" -- (again)... And most of the discussion is obviously centered on the creation/evolution of Adam's physical body...
This is an obvious manifestation of the "imaging error" we were discussing, A-G...
IMGO, the spiritual damage that ceiling painter did is astounding. Must be he had guidance from "Allah" (see tagline)...
bttt
Which theory of evolution are they talking about anyhow?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1839540/posts?page=22#22
More: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1842375/posts?page=34#34
More:
Vienna cardinal draws lines in Intelligent Design row
Yahoo News / Reuters ^ | Sun Nov 20, 6:17 AM ET | Tom Heneghan, Religion Editor
Posted on 11/20/2005 8:32:28 PM EST by Chi-townChief
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1525834/posts
When Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn waded into a heated debate over evolution in the United States, his goal was not to persuade American schools to teach that God created the world in six days.
Nor was it to condemn Charles Darwin and his “The Origin of Species,” a book that Schoenborn, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Vienna, considers a great work in the history of ideas.
His concern, Schoenborn told Reuters at his episcopal palace in central Vienna, was to stand up for common sense in a debate that had become ideological. He wanted to make clear where the Church thinks scientists overstep their bounds.
“The Church’s task now is to defend reason,” he explained, citing as his inspiration his former theology professor Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict.
“The theory of evolution is a scientific theory,” he said. “What I call evolutionism is an ideological view that says evolution can explain everything in the whole development of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.”
Often tipped as a potential future pope, Schoenborn, 60, came under stinging attack by U.S. scientists after he published an op-ed article in the New York Times last July backing the “Intelligent Design” view of the world’s origins.
The harsher critics charged he was a simpleton trying to replace science with creationism — the view that God made the world exactly as laid out in Genesis, the first book of the Bible — and throw American education back by a century.
Dismissing this censure with a smile, the cardinal spelled out a position that respects Darwin’s achievements but rejects neo-Darwinist views he said go beyond what science can prove.
“The biblical teaching about creation is not a scientific theory,” he said, restating a Catholic view that contrasts with the literal reading of some conservative U.S. Protestants opposed to Darwin. “Christian teaching about creation is not an alternative to evolution.”
INTELLIGENT DESIGN
Schoenborn agrees with the Intelligent Design theory that the complexity of life clearly points to a superior intelligence that must have devised this system. He based this on reason, not science, as Intelligent Design theorists claim to do.
“The next step is to ask — which intelligence? As a believer, of course I think it is the intelligence of the Creator,” he said.”
Asked about the debate on teaching Intelligent Design in U.S. schools, Schoenborn declined to comment directly. A Pennsylvania school board was voted out this month for backing Intelligent Design in science classes, but Kansas decided to teach it.
He thought private and state schools in Austria should include in their science classes a mention of the “intelligent project that is the cosmos,” as Pope Benedict put it last week in apparent backing for Intelligent Design.
Schoenborn, a good-humored Dominican who was the editor for the Church’s authoritative Catechism published in 1992, expressed surprise at the barrage of criticism he got for saying Darwin could not explain everything.
DEFENDS CRITICISM
“If this is a scientific theory, it must be open to scientific criticism,” he said. “What I’m criticizing is a kind of strategy to immunize it, as if it were an offence to Darwin’s dignity to say there are some issues this theory can’t explain.
“There’s a kind of ban on discussing this and critics of the evolution theory are discredited or discriminated against from the start,” he said.
“What I would like is to see in schools is a critical and open spirit, in a positive sense, so we don’t make a dogma out of the theory of evolution but we say it is a theory that has a lot going for it but has no answers for some questions.”
He questioned neo-Darwinism, the scientifically updated version of Darwin’s thesis first published in 1859, and its argument that natural selection — the so-called “survival of the fittest” — created life out of matter randomly.
“Can we reasonably say the origin of man and life can only be explained by material causes?” he asked. “Can matter create intelligence? That is a question we can’t answer scientifically, because the scientific method cannot grasp it.”
“Common sense tells us that matter cannot organize itself,” he said. “It needs information to do that, and information is a manifestation of intelligence.”
Although his reading on evolution has covered several scientific disciplines, Schoenborn stressed his objections to neo-Darwinism were essentially philosophical.
Like his mentor Pope Benedict, he is deeply concerned that materialism — the science-based view that matter is the only reality — is crowding out religious and spiritual thinking in modern man’s perception of the world.
“It’s all about materialism, that’s the key issue,” he said.
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