A question for Non-Fundamentalist Christians

[elman]

I understand that there are a lot of christians out there who do not believe in the literal, word for word truth of the Bible, who for instance do not believe there was a world wide flood or a Tower of Babel or a lot of things found in the Old Testament. If you are a literal believer of the Bible, this question is not for you, and I would appreciate it if you did not post. Thank you.


Question:

Assuming you are a christian who does not hold every word and story in the OT to be historical fact, and understands that the world is much older than 6000 years and creationism is not true, what do you think of Genesis? If the OT is not true in the literal sense, and there was no garden of eden and no apple to eat, where do you think original sin came from?

I'm especially interested in hearing from christians who acknowledge the theory of evolution as fact, who are well educated and perhaps in scientific or academic jobs but still hold on to their faith.

Thank you.

Original sin is an idea that came from men. It is not from God. We are all like Adam created spiritually and physically alive. We can and will, if we live long enough, kill our own soul with our own sin. Ezekiel 18. Adam did not kill our soul.

 

[lindart]

I am a radiation professional and it was radiation science that absolutely, without a single doubt, confirmed to me what I already knew in my heart. In fact, all of science points to our awesome Creator. It is just that many there are that see only the physical manisfestations because they are limited by their finite short-sightedness! Just ask God to open your eyes and you will see with believing eyes!

 

[MKJ]

With regard to questions about the Fall happened in evolutionary schemes: many people would say that the first human ancestors who had rational souls given to them by God are likly responsible for the first sin. THat is, they chose to do something that they knew to be morally wrong (it appears perhaps under some demonic influence, but freely nonetheless.) It was this act of turning away from Truth and God that brought death, and clouded our vision so that we could no longer control ourselves, or be intimate with God, in the same way.

Now, the problem of course here is that we would say from an evolutionary POV that death existed in creation before human ancestors were ever around. How could this be if death is a post-fall phenomena?

Some people might suggest that it is only human death that is at issue - God always intended animals and plants to die. I take a different perspective - I think the Fall impacted ALL of history, not just that which came after it. So in the same way that people who lived before Christ are still affected by the Incarnation and Resurrection, the Fall changed all of history, right from the beginning. Science only reveals to us the Fallen world - we really have no idea what the world would be like, how history, or pre-history, or even the laws of physics would have worked if there had been no Fall.

 

[razeontherock]

what do you think of Genesis?

That's a rather broad question. How 'bout:

Q: what truths was it intended to convey?

A: that God is most high, and above all other Gods. (Referring to the first few chapters. It gets much more complicated after that)

where do you think original sin came from?

We each have our own original sin. At some point we chose to violate our conscience, and we knew it. The current concept of original sin is not part of the original teaching of the Church. (This also holds true for most of what you asked in this thread, showing just how pervasive misunderstandings have become.)

 

[Harry3142]

Jade Margery-

To understand the creation stories found in Genesis we need to understand to whom they were directed. They were for the edification of a people who had just left a nation (Egypt) that worshipped over 40 different gods and goddesses, each of whom had a physical form that was either the night sky, the sun, the moon, or an animal or combination of different animals put together. Every animal known to man was the personification of one or more of these gods or goddesses.

Examining the first creation story (Genesis 1:1 to 2:3) in this light, we can see a methodical dismantling of the egyptian mythologies. The animals around them were merely animals, the sun and the moon were merely objects in the sky that furnished us with light, and the night sky was merely other lights. All traces of divinity had been 'stripped' from them; they were only to be seen as part of the natural world.

The second creation story (Genesis 2:4-25) separated homo sapiens from all the other creatures. Again this was in response to egyptian mythology. According to the Egyptian Creation Epic the gods and goddesses only created more gods and goddesses for the first 5 days of the creation; on the 6th day they created all the animals, including mankind, and placed them on this planet almost as an afterthought.

The second creation story gave Man a special position. He was permitted to name all the other animals, a sign of power over them in that day. He alone could converse directly with God, and God was willing to converse with him. He alone had a mate that was created as a part of himself, and so was to be his trusted ally. He alone had a special place prepared for him (The Garden of Eden) where he could live in relative ease. Like the other animals, he was innocent of what constituted good and evil. But he had the ability to change that, whereas the other animals did not, and remain innocent even today.

Even what happened to the serpent in The Garden of Eden was a hebraic 'spin' on an egyptian myth. The serpent's name was Sebau in egyptian mythology, and Ra had engaged him in battle, hacked off his front legs, bound his back legs together, and thereby forced him to crawl on his stomach. But God was shown to be capable of doing this with only his will.

I myself believe in Intelligent Design. God has had a 'hand's on' approach to his creation from the Big Bang to the present day. I reject macroevolution, as some try to use it to separate what we see around us from God. Too many evolutionists have proclaimed that there have been no extinction level events since 65 million years ago, but the planet itself shows evidence that there have been ELE's as recently as 70,000 years ago, with many others having occurred betweeen that time and 65 million years ago.

How mankind came to know that there is good and there is evil, and even identify which actions correspond to these two opposites, can just as easily be described as a result of eating the forbidden fruit as any other explanation. But it's a 'given' that at some point in the existence of Man he lost his innocence. He knew from that point on that there was good and there was evil, and that he could consciously and deliberately choose which path he would follow. On the date that occurred, evil truly entered the world as we now know it.