Posted on 09/20/2005 5:35:52 PM PDT by curiosity
Most adult Sunday school classes don't raise eyebrows, but my church is planning to hold one that's sure to. It's called "Evolution for Christians," and it will be taught this winter by David Bush, a member of the church I lead, Fairfax Presbyterian. David is an articulate government retiree who has been interested in this topic for nearly two decades, teaches a class on theories of the origins of life every five years or so, and once again has really done his homework. His view is that science and religion answer two different sets of questions about creation, with science answering the "how" questions, and religion answering the "why" ones. "With a little bit of wisdom and tolerance on each side," he tells me, "I think they can complement rather than contradict each other."
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"I have heard that Darwin denounced evolution on his deathbed, but I have NOT seen it substantiated. Anyone???"
Well if he did there is not an evolutionists on this earth that will admit it. Let me know what you find out.
Everywhere. In your genes. At your local natural history museum.
So if there is a mountain of evidence, it's not a "theory" anymore...evolution is a fact and the Churches and synagogues should trumpet it...right???
It's a both thoery and a fact. The two things are not mutually exclusive, you know.
And no, Churches and synagogues should not trumpet evolution for the same reason they don't trumpet the theory of quantum mechanics or the germ theory of disease: it is not a matter of faith or morals.
"Hebrews 6:18 ...it is impossible for God to lie...
It's true that God cannot lie not that He will not. It's not because it's IN His nature not to lie, it's becasue it IS His nature. God is Truth. That is why He cannot lie."
If this is taken literally.
If there is anything that God CANNOT do, He is not God, but simply an immensely powerful being.
God does not lie, because He does not choose to lie, nor need to lie. (Lie to whom anyway?)
An immensely powerful but limited being, limited by anything, is not God - by definition - and not interesting.
Take a look at the scientific method.
Mountains of evidence makes it a good theory, even a powerful theory. But it never gets beyond a theory. Laymen often mistake the way science works. Facts, for example, are little bits of data, such as rocks are hard (and for advanced students, there is the scale which defines just how hard a particular rock is under a particular condition).
Try this explanation:
The fact that individual species evolve (common descent) is no longer disputed. Even the ID folks have mostly accepted it.Piling up facts is not science--science is facts-and-theories. Facts alone have limited use and lack meaning: a valid theory organizes them into far greater usefulness.
A powerful theory not only embraces old facts and new but also discloses unsuspected facts [Heinlein 1980:480-181].
The theory of evolution has withstood 150+ years of testing and has not been falsified.
Does this help?
You will find theistic evolutionists here. Most do not believe that God fiddles with evolution. Personally it seems a bit unworthy of the creator of the universe to have to tinker with it to keep it running.
Just my opinion.
BEWARE, unleashing the Lion of the Tribe of Judah can be harmful to your worldview! (Red letters indicate words spoken by Jesus)
Rom 6:9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.
Rom 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:
Rom 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses,...
Rom 5:21 That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Rom 6:23 For the wages of sin [is] death; but the gift of God [is] eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
1Cr 15:54-55
54 So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
55 O death, where [is] thy sting? O grave, where [is] thy victory?
Mar 10:6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.
Isa 45:12 I have made the earth, and created man upon it: I, [even] my hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have I commanded.
Zec 12:1 The burden of the word of the LORD for Israel, saith the LORD, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.
Isa 42:5 Thus saith God the LORD, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein:
Isa 45:18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I [am] the LORD; and [there is] none else.
Isa 40:21-22
Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?
Isa 64:4 For since the beginning of the world [men] have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, [what] he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man [of] the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Gen 5:1 This [is] the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;
Deu 4:32 For ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth,
Gen 5:5 And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died.
New Testament references to Adam.
Luk 3:38 Which was [the son] of Enos, which was [the son] of Seth, which was [the son] of Adam, which was [the son] of God.
1Cr 15:45 And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul;
Jud 1:14 And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints,
1Ti 2:13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
Col 2:8 Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
Ladies, this comment epitomizes the geocentric and egocentric (self-important) tunnel vision that, IMHO, has cost the cause of Christianity immeasurably... :-(
And I praise Him for that and have gratefully accepted His marvelous grace!!!
But Jesus wasn't sent here because this planet (or the men-in God's [spirit] image who inhabit it) was/were "pretty special to Him" .
Jesus Himself said that He came "to seek and to save that which was lost".
IOW, God sent his Son here because mankind sinned -- not because this planet or its inhabitants were created any more "special to Him" than any of the rest of his mighty works.
As I said, claiming that this planet (or you or I) are "special creations" is the height of prideful hubris. What right have we to insist that nowhere else in God's vast created universe did he place beings in His own image -- or to insist that, if they were created, that they also sinned?
Being a sinner doesn't make me "special". Being saved by God's grace most certainly does...
There are angels and although they were never declared to have been created in God's image, about 1/3 of them did fall. I wonder what the evolutionists would say if a Christian admitted to them that they believed in extra-terrestrial life? Advanced life forms that could travel through space and presumably other dimensions.
I enjoy studying the evolution of the outer-bird-bodies we call airplanes, from barely able to fly, to supersonic swallows, in 100 years (1905 to 2005). It is a fine example of survival of the fittest, generation after generation. (All due to random mutation and natural selection, of course.)
Actually for hundreds of years we reckoned a "day" to be 12 or so hours of sunlight(depending upon the season and your latitude)and the "night" to be the 12 or so hours of dark. Each day and night was EXACTLY 12 hours, so the actual length of the hours changed. So how many "hours" are there in a "day" as reckoned "from the beginning" did you say there were?
And I guess darkness is the only thing that can go faster than the speed of light, because it has to stay out of lights way! ;)
"Why is it that when a creationist wishes to portray an idea as false and worthless, he calls it religion, and when an ID advocate seeks respect, he calls ID science?"
---
For the same reason that when an evolutionist wishes to portray an idea as false and worthless, he calls it religion, and when an evolutionist advocate seeks respect, he calls evolutionary science.
Why would God *need* to violate the laws of nature He created? Why would He create them, and then violate them? I see no need for Him to have done so, because I think that everything we see around us can be explained *within* the physical laws we understand.
Moreover, have you ever witnessed God violate physical laws? If you have, and can document what you witnessed with ironclad proof that physical laws of time or space were violated, then you're holding genuine scientific proof that God exists.
It's been generally accepted by both science and faithful people that science cannot vouch for actions of God. Science cannot measure God on an electronic meter or balance scale.
So if you believe in a God that *used* to violate the physical laws He created, but at some point He stopped doing so, how do you know He still exists? Perhaps He created the universe, and left town? I think that's a fairy tale version of God.
If you believe that God still operates all around us, and He has been constant for all time, then you must view what you read in Genesis through the reality of time and space that we see around is. It's just not possible for God to have created the stars zillions of light years away, and for us to see the light from them, if He created them only a few thousand years ago. That violates the physical laws that God created, and there is no evidence ever seen by anybody that God does such things, so I can't believe it.
The simpler explanation is that Genesis is a grand summary of a vast and infinitely complicated creation, written so that any man can read it and know that God created the universe. That's all it means. It simply cannot be real history, because it simply does not match what we find in Gods creation itself.
A God that snaps his fingers and the universe is in place is a fairy tale. A God that is all around us, and has the patience to spend billions of years patiently working on His creation is an immense, huge, powerful God. That's a God that's powerful enough to live in the entire universe at once. Yours lives in a simple book, transcribed by humans, that you hold in your hand. Your God is tiny, mine is infinite.
[There is no logical reason Protestants can't accept it too.]
You poor Catholics who deny the Word of God and try to reconcile false science and false theology and call God Almighty and His Christ a liar.
Search the scriptures, for they testify of the Christ and disregard the oppositions of science, FALSELY SO CALLED.
If God exists, then the evidence says that He created an ingenious invention we call "evolution" that gave us every species of life we see around us.
Evolution is an incredible invention. It has operated continually, without interruption, for billions of years. It requires no apparent "hands on" operation by God that we can detect and measure.
Life, and evolution, finds and uses it's own energy. It repairs itself. It expands it's reach to new territory.
Can you even imagine a machine created by man to do such a thing?
Evolution is Gods most powerful of inventions. It is all around us. But you can't even imagine it's existence with people right here showing it to you, and that's a sad thing.
(Liberalism is a cancer on society. Creationism is a cancer on conservatism.)
You poor blind conservative, you are only half right and will find the answer in the judgement of God by Christ Jesus our Lord UNLESS you believe how that he died for OUR sins and rose again the third day for your justification;
THE JUST SHALL LIVE BY FAITH. Otherwise, you will suffer the wrath of God which Jesus Christ suffered for all who believe on Him as Saviour and Lord.
If God is all-powerful, how come He cannot make Himself understood by all people in the same way? How come an omnipotent God isn't known by all the people of the entire earth?
How did you get to be so lucky to have a perfect understanding of God, and those poor Catholics do not? How come you're so smart, and they're so dumb?
Or, maybe it's the other way round?
I will leave you to think about that one.
"An immensely powerful but limited being, limited by anything, is not God - by definition - and not interesting."
IIThessalonians 2:3 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
Sound powerful enough.
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