Evolution Corrupts the Gospel

Remember, the story of the Garden is an allegory. Snakes don't talk, and never did. Immortality doesn't come from a tree. God told Adam that he would die the day he ate from the tree, and yet Adam lived on for many years after.

"Eating from the tree" is just the way the Bible deals with us becoming able to understand good and evil.

Change indeed. Not only the ability to understand good and evil, but also the Breath of Life, which transformed us into immortal beings. But one, God gave to us by natural means, and the other by supernatural means. This is what He is telling us when He says that man was made (like the other animals) from the earth, but also has been given an immortal soul, which changes everything.

Good question. Could God have assured that humans would not sin? Sure. Picture God telling Adam that he can enjoy all things, except "don't touch that tree over there". You don't have to be God, to know what was going to happen next. And then He puts a talking snake into the garden to make sure.

Notice that, as God observes, the knowledge of good and evil makes Adam like Him. This is a necessary thing, if God is going to share the wonder of His creation with us. But it's a painful step, and we cannot by ourselves, make the next step that would permit us to be with Him.

That's why He sent a Savior.

 

The Garden of Eden is not an allegory, Barbarian/Galatian -- it's just that you need to think about it that way so you can keep your evolutionary beliefs from being disturbed.

The truth is, when something is being presented as an allegory in the Bible, it is stated as such. In Ezekiel 17:2 we see the Lord saying "Son of man, set forth an allegory and tell the house of Israel a parable." Allegories and parables are clearly delineated throughout the Bible.

Genesis is presented as straightforward history, start to finish. It should be accepted or rejected on its own terms, not on terms you or anyone else choose to impose upon it.

 

Well said, and thanks again Helen.

If the straightforward reading of Genesis 1-3 is not what most Christians believe these days, oh God let me remain in the remnant that takes Him at His word.

 

Actually, it is, according to most Christians, who should know. From the start, as others have shown here, Christians knew that it was not literal.

That would put Darwinism back to the time of St. Augustine, Helen. He also knew it wasn't literal.

Hmm... no. Sometimes, but not always. We have many examples in Scripture where figurative language is not specifically labeled as such.

I know you believe it is. But that isn't sufficient evidence.

Indeed. You should let it be as God intended it to be. On its own terms. The latter-day doctrine of creationism cannot be reconciled with Scripture.

 

Helen wrote:

Helen, you and others on this board base your reasoning on the assumption that the Bible comes from God – that God directly or indirectly guided the writing of the Bible, implying that, for example, Genesis 1-3 is God’s story of the beginning of the world, and in general the Bible tells us how God sees things.

However, many people, including Christians such as myself, do not share this assumption about the Bible. I see the Bible as embodying the response of two societies, the ancient Israelites and the early Christian community, to their (very real) experience of God. It was written by humans and remains a human product, although it had its origins in its authors’ experience of the Divine. On this view, Genesis 1-3 is the ancient Israelites’ story of the beginning of the world, not God’s story.

When you are speaking to Christians who share your view of the Bible, you can safely base your reasoning on the assumption that the Bible comes from God. Here and in other discussion forums where Christians of other flavors participate, you cannot base your arguments on your view of the Bible and expect the dissenters to buy into your line of reasoning.

But you depend on your own mind and understanding to conclude that the Bible should be understood in a literal, factual way, the way one understands a newspaper story, and that the Bible has a “clear and straightforward meaning.” Nothing wrong with that; if we are not going to use our minds and understanding to understand the Bible, we may as well not have them.

Isn’t it curious, then, that the vast majority of scientists, especially biologists and geologists, believe that the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. See a list of over 300 scientists named “Steve” or a related name who subscribe to this statement here. (The 300th signatory was Stephen Hawking.)

You make another assumption here: that historical and factual truth is the only kind of truth. But myth and metaphor have their own kind of truth. I believe that Genesis 1-3 is both true and profound when properly understood as metaphor and myth. This should be good news to Christians: we can eat our modern scientific cake and have our Christianity too.

Richard

 

We who take God at His word thank you for acknowledging your dissent.

 

Hold on there, James. Among other things I am raising the question, How do we know what God has said? We can't "take God at His word" unless we know what God has said -- if indeed God speaks to us in the ordinary human way using language.

A question worth considering: Why does the Christian tradition speak of the Bible as the Word of God, not the words of God?

 

63 times in the KJV New Testament we find the phrase "it is written". 7 times in the KJV New Testament we find the phrase "have ye not read".

I haven't even tried to count how many times it is written (there's that phrase again) in the Old Testament, "thus sayeth the Lord".

When originally written by those men under under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, those words were exactly what God wanted to be written.

The Confession of 1689 puts it, "Chapter 1: Of the Holy Scriptures 4._____ The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God. ( 2 Peter 1:19-21; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 John 5:9 )"

Taken collectively, the Bible is the Word of God.
Taken individually, all of the words in the original autographs are the Words of God.

 

So, your argument is that it's right because it says it is?

Because it says so...?

 

Yes, it is the written revelation of God to His people. There is no higher authority to refer to, it is the highest. If we attempt to appeal to higher authority we de-throne God. God cannot lie, God does not change. His written word stands on the same level as He does, the highest level, for all time.

 

It would seem that instead of men evolving up from brute beasts, that some go the other way according to the scripture found in Jude 10.

 

Helen, the link you provided quotes an article by Trevor Major as follows:

"Radiocarbon dating assumes that the carbon-12/carbon-14 ratio has stayed the same for at least the last hundred thousand years or so"

The quote simply is not true. The radiocarbon dating labs do not assume that the ratio of the two carbons has stayed the same. In fact, the reason for using dendochronology and other methods is to correct for the fact that the C-12/C-14 ratio has changed. Also, Setterfield's claim that such corrections are not valid is a claim that is without merit. More recently the C-14 method has been calibrated using lake sediments stretching back more than 40,000 years.

The false information given by Trevor Major (above) is interesting because he discusses the dendochronology work but somehow does not seem to understand that the need for it is required by recognition that the C-12/C-14 ratio does vary with time! I can attribute this contridiction only to his lack of knowledge of the method. In other words, he discusses the use of correction methods by mainstream science and then says, in effect, that mainstream science claims not to require a calibration method! The calibration method, using tree rings, would not be required at all if the assumption of C-12/C-14 were actually used.

 

>>>>>>>>>In the case of old-earth geochronometers such as some of the radiometric clocks - the problem is the "starting conditions" have to be "assumed" rather than "proven". And of course - atheism makes the "assumption" of no radioactive daughter products and a non-useful parent product - because they don't "need" a living-planet to start with.<<<<<<

BobRyan,

I believe those words are your above. Your statements above are not correct. There are radiometric methods that do not assume certain starting conditions and do not assume zero radioactive daughter products. There are really many methods, and if you want to talk about them, you should specify which methods you are talking about. The fact is that you are no specialist in this area and have very little background to speak with any knowledge on the methods.

 

Assuming that man is less evil than animals with no sense of good or evil, is contrary to everything God tells us in Scripture.

This is a perfect example of the way a literal interpretation of Genesis tends to lead one away from God's word. Yes, even BEASTS are innocent, relative to man. Man fell from that state of innocence by gaining a knowledge of good and evil, as God tells us.

Denying it is pointless.

 

JamesJ wrote:

I know that you and a lot of other people believe this, James, but I am asking why you believe it, how you know that it’s true. I’m as interested as you are in finding out the truth about what God has said, and if there are good reasons to believe that the Bible contains the very words of God, or that God guided the pens of the authors, or that the Bible comes more or less directly from God, or that Genesis contains God’s story of the creation, or that God intends us to understand Genesis as literal and factual history, then I would like to know what those reasons are. But so far I have not received any help from this board.

If the Bible contains the words of God, then yes, there is no higher authority than the words of God. But why do you believe this, that the words of the Bible are “what God says”? Common sense would suggest that the Bible, like all other books, was written by and is a product of humans, not the Deity, and although common sense can be wrong, it’s the default point of view if reasons against it are lacking.

I would add that I believe that the Bible was written as a response to its authors’ real experience of God, and that the Bible is revelatory of God – it discloses God’s nature to us. The Spirit often speaks to us when we read the Bible. But that is a long way from saying that the contents of the Bible are “what God says.”

The belief that God essentially wrote the Bible and that the Bible is “what God says” has a number of serious consequences for Christianity:

1. There is the head-on collision with modern science that we are discussing in this forum.

2. The laws of ancient Israel are seen as God’s laws. Those laws contain a prohibition against wearing garments made of two kinds of cloth, the death penalty for homosexual sex, and other strictures that we supposedly must accept as God’s law. Some passages in the Bible (e.g. I Timothy 2:9-15) support the subordination of women.

3. The Bible contains such stories as the following:

God wrote this, did He? The Bible also says that God killed all the first-born Egyptians, and drowned many children in the Flood, and quite a bit more. God said all this, so it’s true, right? Do you really worship a God who did all that the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) says He did?

Richard

 

But that's the whole point. The people that God inspired to write the scripture had a real, revelatory experience that moved them in such a way to write what they did. When the Spirit speaks to us as we read the scripture He reveals to us God's ways. He will never contradict what has already been written.
2 Peter 1:19-21 reads: We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts: 20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. 21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

I don't believe that there is any actual collision between modern science and the scripture, only the interpretation of the data filtered through the pre-suppositions that we bring with us. The microscope and the telescope and the shovel have been nothing but friends to the scripture. Nothing discovered by science has ever proven any scripture to be wrong.

Yes, I do. There are some very hard sayings in the scriptures but I believe that they are there for our benefit. That particular passage gave me a hard time too but Moses did not do what God instructed him to. God is not ashamed of any of the things that He has done. Since this passage is recorded in the scriptures, there must be good reason for it. There must be something that we are supposed to get out of it.

 

>>>>>>If your "point" is to show "the KEY and salient points of evolutionism established as fact" then do so.<<<<<<<<

No, I am not attempting to show that evolution is established as a fact. What I did show is that various objections that you have raised, to an old earth, are in fact mistaken.

 

Galation observes:
Of course there is. The Bible tells you what it is. It is the knowledge of good and evil. Animals lacking this understanding are perfect and sinless. They cannot sin, because they are incapable of understanding evil. So the Fall was the aquisition of the knowledge of good and evil.

If your new doctrine of God is correct, God is not omnipotent after all. Honestly now, given human nature, do you think humans would not go and investigate such knowledge? Of course He knew what would happen. Where does God say he is "shocked and disappointed?" We could not become like God, and able to share His creation, until we had a knowledge of good and evil.

Because we had become like God in knowing good and evil, but unable to be truly good, that sacrifice was necessary. God also knew this from the beginning, before man was created.

I know you believe so, but in the absence of any compelling reason to believe that...

Becoming angry and abusive is never a good tactic.

Galation observes:
See above. Man, upon understanding good and evil, becomes like God in that respect, but being unable to be completely good, is only potentially able to have fellowship with Him.

You seem to be arguing with yourself here. No one said this.

It contradicts what some people would like to add to scripture, but it doesn't otherwise affect the NT at all.

Not for a Christian. Evolution is merely God's creation. He does most things by natural means in this world. It doesn't mean He doesn't love you.

Galation observes:
Nonsense. Any theistic evolutionary POV would require a Savior for just that reason.

Ur, no. You can't go back. We will remain moral beings, understanding good and evil. But by Jesus' death on the cross and his Resurrection, we can become saved and capable of fellowship with God. We never become "innocent" in the sense of not knowing good and evil. Becoming a moral being was necessary for us to be with God.

I know you believe so. But if you think about it, you'll see that it is merely offensive to you, and not contradictory to Scripture.

Galation observes:
But you're assuming that they agree with your particular interpretation of Genesis, and you have given us no reason to believe that is true.

I've read it. It doesn't say what you want it to say.

I doubt if you could get any theologian to tell you that allegorical verses become literal if cited in Scripture.

Sorry, God citing figurative speech is does not make it literal.

Christians generally disagree with you on the nature of that passage. Not that you aren't entitled to believe otherwise. And God will not send you to Hell for being unorthodox.

The first humans were male and female. That is perfectly consistent with evolutionary theory.

You've confused allegory with history again.

Hmm... haven't see the passage where Paul says that. I think you are reading your desires into Scripture again.

But if you can't actually show it says what you say it says, then it's pointless.

There's no reason to become angry and abusive. You simply inserted your ideas between the lines in Scripture, and insist that we accept them as God's Word. It won't work.

Let God decide. And then you will be at peace with His creation. And yourself.