Theistic evolution or non-theistic evolution

[rlvaughn]

Neither evolution view explains how God created Adam. nor how life itself started!

I agree.

 

[Crabtownboy]

Gen. 1 shows how the world evolved as God directed the process ... from the simple to the complex.

 

[Yeshua1]

Gen. 1 shows how the world evolved as God directed the process ... from the simple to the complex.

Except that it states that all life was made after its own kind and species, not evolved on the fly!

 

[Crabtownboy]

Except that it states that all life was made after its own kind and species, not evolved on the fly!

But, what I said still holds. Gen.1 shows an evolution from the simple to the complex. It did not go into specific details.

 

[rlvaughn]

Crabtownboy, how are you using/defining the word "evolution"? It generally means a process or gradual development of something from simple to complex. You mention the latter process -- but do not explain where Genesis 1 shows the development of simple to complex. If God speaks and it is, for example, then what is is, whether simple or complex. Where is the development?

Thanks.

 

[Yeshua1]

Crabtownboy, how are you using/defining the word "evolution"? It generally means a process or gradual development of something from simple to complex. You mention the latter process -- but do not explain where Genesis 1 shows the development of simple to complex. If God speaks and it is, for example, then what is is, whether simple or complex. Where is the development?

Thanks.

All living creaters came fully developed when created by God!

 

[Calv1]

I'm just wondering, is this board mainly to discuss theistic evolution vs creationism, or is it non-theistic evolution? The resaon I ask, is that everyone who posts to these boards, is supposed to give a faith statement. Therefore I can't imagine that any atheists would be hanging out here. Is it fair to say that everyone here who believes in evolution is still a Christian?

I don't understand, all of the Scientific evidence points, today, AGAINST Evolution, in fact Scientists are getting away from traditional Neo-Darwinism, they're moving to Philosophy, specifically a brand of Hinduism that teaches parallel universes, see the laws of this universe, we know now, cannot support evolution, IE can't get something from nothing, so they are moving to different universes with different laws of science to explain it, after all they can't simply say "In the beginning God", but they also can't defend Neo-Darwinism Scientifically

 

[Stretch]

When I graduated from college, way back in 1976, with a degree in Biology, I was certain of a number of things, one being that "evolution" (which many use as a general tern for abiogenesis) was a fact just waiting to be proven. I was also an agnostic. [Side note: I taught school for one year, and in a student panel - which probably couldn't happen today - a student asked my religious beliefs. I responded that I was an agnostic, and the football coach, who was also on the panel, asked what that was. The moderator explained that an agnostic was someone who doesn't believe or disbelieve in God. The coach growled, "Why, you're just a wishy-washy atheist!"] After that one year of teaching, I went to work for a huge corporation in a management position, and remained there until I retired, never using my actual degree or remaining current in the field. I was saved in 1983, and baptized (I had been baptized as a young boy, about 12, in the Southern Baptist church, but I really didn't know what it truly meant at the time - it was something to be done.)

Today, I do believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. I believe that God created the universe and everything in it. I am an Old Earth creationist, and I believe that God gave us the Word as a testament to "Why" and not "How" (in other words, it isn't a biology or chemistry - my minor - textbook.) Evolution is a process that can be observed and reproduced (pun intended) in the lab, but it does not demonstrate the origins of life. (Darwin never claimed that it did, and science as far as I know today has not claimed to know the actual means by which life arose on Earth.) I believe that God is the originator and creator of life on Earth, and the creation account isn't specific as to the mechanics of that process in the same way my wife may say "I made a cake" but she doesn't detail all the individual steps and ingredients she used to make that cake.

I don't think God wants us to focus on the details or specific steps of "how." If He had, those details would have been provided. Also, bear in mind, at the time that Genesis was given to man, the general level of knowledge was far inferior than it is today, and it might have been like Hawking explaining string theory to a group of two year olds (or me, for that matter - physics is hard stuff - and two year olds grasp it better than I do!) God may very well have used evolution as a process to direct the formation and development of life in general, in the same way that my wife uses a number of ingredients and steps to make a cake. When it comes to Adam and Eve, however, I trust that the account in Genesis is sufficiently explicit to mean that they were a unique creation, embodied with a soul, that distinguishes them from the rest of God's creation.

Do I have questions? Yes, and I don't begin to think my "understanding" is correct or complete. I just accept by faith that God is the originator of life, and that the how doesn't matter...the why does. I hope there are classes in the subject in Heaven (or the new Earth) but it may well be that at that time it no longer matters as what was is no more.

 

[Yeshua1]

When I graduated from college, way back in 1976, with a degree in Biology, I was certain of a number of things, one being that "evolution" (which many use as a general tern for abiogenesis) was a fact just waiting to be proven. I was also an agnostic. [Side note: I taught school for one year, and in a student panel - which probably couldn't happen today - a student asked my religious beliefs. I responded that I was an agnostic, and the football coach, who was also on the panel, asked what that was. The moderator explained that an agnostic was someone who doesn't believe or disbelieve in God. The coach growled, "Why, you're just a wishy-washy atheist!"] After that one year of teaching, I went to work for a huge corporation in a management position, and remained there until I retired, never using my actual degree or remaining current in the field. I was saved in 1983, and baptized (I had been baptized as a young boy, about 12, in the Southern Baptist church, but I really didn't know what it truly meant at the time - it was something to be done.)

Today, I do believe that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God. I believe that God created the universe and everything in it. I am an Old Earth creationist, and I believe that God gave us the Word as a testament to "Why" and not "How" (in other words, it isn't a biology or chemistry - my minor - textbook.) Evolution is a process that can be observed and reproduced (pun intended) in the lab, but it does not demonstrate the origins of life. (Darwin never claimed that it did, and science as far as I know today has not claimed to know the actual means by which life arose on Earth.) I believe that God is the originator and creator of life on Earth, and the creation account isn't specific as to the mechanics of that process in the same way my wife may say "I made a cake" but she doesn't detail all the individual steps and ingredients she used to make that cake.

I don't think God wants us to focus on the details or specific steps of "how." If He had, those details would have been provided. Also, bear in mind, at the time that Genesis was given to man, the general level of knowledge was far inferior than it is today, and it might have been like Hawking explaining string theory to a group of two year olds (or me, for that matter - physics is hard stuff - and two year olds grasp it better than I do!) God may very well have used evolution as a process to direct the formation and development of life in general, in the same way that my wife uses a number of ingredients and steps to make a cake. When it comes to Adam and Eve, however, I trust that the account in Genesis is sufficiently explicit to mean that they were a unique creation, embodied with a soul, that distinguishes them from the rest of God's creation.

Do I have questions? Yes, and I don't begin to think my "understanding" is correct or complete. I just accept by faith that God is the originator of life, and that the how doesn't matter...the why does. I hope there are classes in the subject in Heaven (or the new Earth) but it may well be that at that time it no longer matters as what was is no more.

The scientific truth about evolution is that there can be observed evolution in specifies, as there are adaptations, but NEVER changes form one to another species... A cat can become a tiger or a lion over time, but never a wolf!

 

[Stretch]

The scientific truth about evolution is that there can be observed evolution in specifies, as there are adaptations, but NEVER changes form one to another species... A cat can become a tiger or a lion over time, but never a wolf!

If by species you mean a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding, I agree.

 

[Yeshua1]

If by species you mean a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding, I agree.

There is evolution/change with same species, as from a pair of dogs over time can have different breeds, but all still remain dogs, not changed to a cat!

 

[Stretch]

There is evolution/change with same species, as from a pair of dogs over time can have different breeds, but all still remain dogs, not changed to a cat!

My wife has a ratty little Chihuahua who acts more like a cat than any dog I've ever seen, but that one anomaly aside, I agree!

 

[FollowTheWay]

Quite frankly I think it's overwhelmingly obvious that Genesis isn't a history/scientific text. The point of Genesis isn't about how old the earth is.

You know, I keep hearing the "very specific" aspects of Genesis. The fact is, it's not very specific. How did plants live before the sun? God? Maybe, but the bible doesn't say *how* or *why* this was so.

Everyone has their own opinion. Mine is that God imbued man with a soul, it didn't evolve. I think that the difference between chimps and humans is a profound one.

I agree with your statement. I believe that the creation account in Genesis needs to be interpreted symbolically. I do not believe in a young earth and as was mentioned there are issues with the timing of some events. I used to believe in a theistic evolution but agree that man is fundamentally different from the rest of creation although I would dearly love to see my dogs in Heaven!

 

[FollowTheWay]

There is, if you trust the science and scientists behind it.

Why would you not trust scientists? Maybe the earth is really flat?

 

[Revmitchell]

Why would you not trust scientists? Maybe the earth is really flat?

Because they start with the presupposition there is no God.

 

[Gold Dragon]

Because they start with the presupposition there is no God.

The last paragraph of Darwin's Origin of Species.

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Catholic Priest George Lemaitre who originally proposed the Big Bang Theory

As far as I see, such a theory [of the primeval atom] remains entirely outside any metaphysical or religious question. It leaves the materialist free to deny any transcendental being. He may keep, for the bottom of space-time, the same attitude of mind he has been able to adopt for events occurring in non-singular places in space-time. For the believer, it removes any attempt to familiarity with God, as were Laplace's chiquenaude or Jeans' finger. It is consonant with the wording of Isaiah speaking of the 'hidden god' hidden even in the beginning of the universe

 

[Revmitchell]

The last paragraph of Darwin's Origin of Species.



Catholic Priest George Lemaitre who originally proposed the Big Bang Theory

I am not sure what the purpose of these quotes are other than the informal logical fallacy of an appeal to authority. That said I can do the same thing:

"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated."

Christopher Hitchens

 

[Gold Dragon]

I am not sure what the purpose of these quotes are other than the informal logical fallacy of an appeal to authority.

I'll spell it out for you. Deacon said a convergence of evidence supported an old earth/universe. You suggested the scientists were not to be trusted because they come with a presupposition there is no God.

Those two quotes are from the originators of evolution and the Big Bang and they clearly state they did not come from the presupposition of atheism.

That said I can do the same thing:

"Faith is the surrender of the mind; it’s the surrender of reason, it’s the surrender of the only thing that makes us different from other mammals. It’s our need to believe, and to surrender our skepticism and our reason, our yearning to discard that and put all our trust or faith in someone or something, that is the sinister thing to me. Of all the supposed virtues, faith must be the most overrated."

Christopher Hitchens

I'm not sure what Christopher Hitchens' view about faith has to do with scientist's views about God when he isn't remotely connected to any fields of science.

 

[Gold Dragon]

I just realized the link to my Lemaitre quote was from a version of google in another language. Here is the english version.

Cosmology and Controversy

 

[FollowTheWay]

Because they start with the presupposition there is no God.

Science and religion address different things. Science addresses theories many times based on observations about the physical world, the seen. Religion addresses matters of faith, the unseen. Actually, many scientists are strong Christians because they are filled with a sense of aware the more they learn about the magnificence of God's creation. This is the way advances in science effect me. Observing the night sky on a clear night on a mountain top or in the desert convinces me that this couldn't have happened by chance but was the creation of the Lord God almighty. The Bible points this out as a way those who have not heard the gospel can begin to get a belief in at least a superior being.

We need to watch the tendency to revert to the days of the Inquisition in which scientists were jailed or put to death because their ideas did not correspond to the Catholic Church's tenets. One good example is Galileo, who was kept under house arrest for the last two years of his life because he accepted Copernicus' theory that the sun not the earth is not the center of our solar system nor is it the center of the universe. Who has been proved to be right, Copernicus and Galileo or the Catholic Church?

Galileo and the Inquisition

Galileo's belief in the Copernican System eventually got him into trouble with the Catholic Church. The Inquisition was a permanent institution in the Catholic Church charged with the eradication of heresies. A committee of consultants declared to the Inquisition that the Copernican proposition that the Sun is the center of the universe was a heresy. Because Galileo supported the Copernican system, he was warned by Cardinal Bellarmine, under order of Pope Paul V, that he should not discuss or defend Copernican theories. In 1624, Galileo was assured by Pope Urban VIII that he could write about Copernican theory as long as he treated it as a mathematical proposition. However, with the printing of Galileo's book, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo was called to Rome in 1633 to face the Inquisition again. Galileo was found guilty of heresy for his Dialogue, and was sent to his home near Florence where he was to be under house arrest for the remainder of his life. In 1638, the Inquisition allowed Galileo to move to his home in Florence, so that he could be closer to his doctors. By that time he was totally blind. In 1642, Galileo died at his home outside Florence.

The Galileo Project | Biography | Inquisition