Well, I wrote this before I saw Petrel's post and now some parts are redundant, but I'll post it anyway.
Originally posted by JWI:
I think you rob God of His supernatural power. He says he made all creation in just six days. He does not describe any evolving creatures.
I think God made the universe in a moment, and he has been sustaining and working out his purposes in the universe for the 13.7 billion years since then. I think creation is outlined over six days, with rests overnight and rest on the seventh day, in order to give a template for the human work week.
Genesis does not explicitly describe evolving creatures any more than it describes the adapting or "devolving" creatures that young-earth creationists accept. Its description of how breeding can influence traits in Genesis 30 is quite different from what we presently believe.
Genesis also doesn't describe bacteria or many other kinds of living things, but that doesn't mean God didn't create these creatures. All of creation, whether it's itemized in Genesis 1 or not, is made and sustained by God. Later passages such as Psalm 104 and Job 38-41 are clear that God is involved in making present creatures too, and also providing their needs. God is not just the creator of some distant archetypes of each kind. In Matthew 6 Jesus says that even the grass of the field is clothed by God, showing that natural processes do not indicate that God is absent. Just because we have a natural explanation for how the grass grows does not mean it happens apart from God.
You say you believe the Bible. I have asked many times for verses that point to evolution. No one has mentioned even one verse.
Could you please provide the verses that support electromagnetism? If there are none, why do you accept the electromagnetic explanation of lightning even though the Bible says that God creates lightning? Once again, you are imposing a double standard: one for evolution, and a lower standard for the science you accept.
In any case, there are hints in the Bible that point toward evolution and common descent. Maybe these things are just coincidences; I'm not sure. God commanded
the earth to produce vegetation (Genesis 1:11-12) rather than creating it
ex nihilo. God commanded
the earth to bring forth all kinds of living creatures (Genesis 1:24). The repeated statements of things reproducing "after their kind" fit extremely well with the nested hierarchy of living things. When speciation occurs, new species remain within the kinds of their ancestors. Dogs may be bred into various breeds, but they are all still dogs. Mammals may speciate into creatures as diverse as camels and whales and bats, but they are all still mammals. No matter what level one looks at (aside from single-celled creatures that Genesis doesn't mention), we see that speciation forms clades where all descendents of a common ancestor are within the same clade, just as branches on a tree can diversify into many smaller branches and twigs, but these twigs always remain on the same branch. A population of a "kind" (or clade) can have descendents that are split into sub-kinds, but animals of one "kind" cannot give birth to creatures of another kind.
Genesis 2 says that humans and animals are made of the same material (Ecclesiastes goes even further with listing similarities). Genesis 3 says that it was pursuing knowledge (good and evil) apart from God that led humans into rebellion against God (and so does Romans 1:19-23). It says that one of the results of obtaining this knowledge is that women will have increased pain in childbirth; compared to early hominids, humans have a far larger skull which in turn requires a longer birthing process with more dilation (differences in the pelvis also make childbirth far more dangerous for humans). Maybe this is all just coincidence, but maybe not.
But you are completely skeptical of God's simple account of creation in Genesis.
No more than you are completely skeptical of God's simple account of pouring out his wrath from seven bowls. The difference is that with Genesis we have more to work with because the evidence of how things did happen are still with us. For Revelation, aside from preterist or historical interpretations, we do not have any evidence yet of how it happened.
My position has been consistent: God created everything natural as well as everything supernatural. God works his purposes through natural and supernatural means. One does not write God out of the picture by saying that there is a natural explanation; that would only be true if nature were not God's creation that is sustained by his power.
Explain to me how Jesus walked on water.
I think it was a miracle! I don't claim to know how it happened. There is no evidence to examine to see how it happened. With creation, however, the evidence is all around us! From analyzing that evidence, we
can see how God has worked in creation, as long as we assume God didn't try to cover his tracks or be otherwise deceptive.
It is not enough for me to imagine an alternate universe or imaginary realm that could have been created just like certain interpretations of Genesis state. I believe God created
this world, and I believe that reality really is real. As such, reality can adjust my interpretations, just as the reality of the earth's rotation and orbit around the sun adjusted other interpretations, and the reality of the brain's utility in thinking adjusted how we read statements about thinking with our heart or kidneys.
What you offer instead is for me to give up certain portions of reality and instead take your word for how things are to be interpreted. You have no problems adjusting your interpretation to match reality in some cases (I doubt you believe we think with our kidneys), so it is not a fundamental difference in how we read the Bible. You use some of the same techniques in detecting the symbolism in the bowls of Revelation that I use to see other indications of symbolism. Where you are unwilling to compromise is not in how you read the Bible, but in what you accept from science. When someone uses the same interpretational methods you accept elsewhere in order to show that Scripture does not conflict with some evidence from creation that you don't accept, you cry foul.
The unforgivable sin that we've committed, it seems, isn't that we read the Bible differently, but rather that we've accepted more details about God's creation than you do.
