Can religion and evolution co-exist? NO NO NO! is what I think!

[Melethiel]

Yes, evolution and religion can co-exist. God used evolution to create all living species.

Athiesm took off at a lightning speed when people found a way to explain how the world came to be without God.

Logical fallacy. Not only that, the roots of widespread atheism were long before the ToE came on the scene.

If evolution is to be believed, this shows that this event never happened, and other people were on earth at the time.

How does evolution say that this even never happened? It doesn't. Evolution cannot speak to an event like that. As for other people being on earth at the time, it is conceivable that Adam was the symbolic head of humanity, and that his sin was imputed to humans in the same way that Christ's righteousness is imputed to those who believe in him.

I found this paragraph of the article interesting:

The third, called ASPM and also involved in brain size, clocks in at 5,800 years. That was just before people established the first cities in the Near East and is well after Homo sapiens attained their modern form.

 

[BAFRIEND]

"God used evolution to create all living species."

The ToE states that it was "random mutation" and that man is not the center of creation. Two doctrines of evolution that go against the Bible. It is not religion that has made them incompatible... it is the theory itself.

 

[Melethiel]

"God used evolution to create all living species."

The ToE states that it was "random mutation" and that man is not the center of creation. Two doctrines of evolution that go against the Bible. It is not religion that has made them incompatible... it is the theory itself.

1. "Doctrines"? You make it sound like a religion.
2. Why do random mutations require that God be inactive? By the definition of science, it cannot say anything about a supernatural being. If God set the mechanisms of evolution in motion, why is that shutting Him out? It no more does so than God setting in motion the functions of gravity and electricity.

 

[BAFRIEND]

1. "Doctrines"? You make it sound like a religion.
2. Why do random mutations require that God be inactive? By the definition of science, it cannot say anything about a supernatural being. If God set the mechanisms of evolution in motion, why is that shutting Him out? It no more does so than God setting in motion the functions of gravity and electricity.

There are four tenents of ToE and those are two of them. Check it out in the library. If you read my other posts in this thread you will see that I qouted it is possible that God evolved the body to the point where it could sustain a soul.
The reason why ToE and religion are not compatible is because the theory itself says God does not exist. trust me when I tell you that a lot of scientists treat their discipline like a religion.

I hope this helps.

 

[GratiaCorpusChristi]

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The ToE states that it was "random mutation"

And perhaps theistic evolution explains the seemingly random nature of the mutation.... It's not an argument for God, but God-fearing evolutionists can certainly fit God in there quite nicely.

and that man is not the center of creation

Man isn't the center of creation! God is the center of creation! Perhaps you should read your Bible.

Two doctrines of evolution that go against the Bible.

Doctrines?!

Doctrines?!

It's not a religion, man! They're theories. Why can't creationists every stop thinking in religious categories when engaging with other disciplines and fields??

 

[sfs]

On the original question: of course religion and evolution can coexist. Many religious people, including many Christians, accept evolution, so they have to be able to coexist. To those who answered "No" -- are you denying that people like me exist?

The ToE states that it was "random mutation"

True, but what does that mean? One thing it does not mean is "God was not involved in the mutations"; that kind of statement is beyond the reach of science. What it really means is that the mutations can adequately be described by a probability distribution, and that particular mutations do not occur preferentially when an organism needs them.

and that man is not the center of creation.

Since Christianity has also traditionally taught that humans are not the center of creation, I'm not sure why you're troubled by this. Did you think that cherubim and seraphim were created to serve humans?

 

[Melethiel]

There are four tenents of ToE and those are two of them. Check it out in the library. If you read my other posts in this thread you will see that I qouted it is possible that God evolved the body to the point where it could sustain a soul.
The reason why ToE and religion are not compatible is because the theory itself says God does not exist. trust me when I tell you that a lot of scientists treat their discipline like a religion.

I hope this helps.

The theory itself makes no statement one way or another as to the existence of God. As to scientists treating their discipline like a religion, that only speaks to the fallacies of the men, not to a tenent of the theory itself.

If God could evolve a body to the point of sustaining a soul, then what is the problem?

I don't recall learning this "4 doctrines," but then, I haven't had biology for a year. I'll pull the biology book off the shelf when I feel like getting off the bed.

 

[sfs]

The reason why ToE and religion are not compatible is because the theory itself says God does not exist.

The theory says nothing of the sort. I don't know where you learned about evolution, but it wasn't from working scientists.

trust me when I tell you that a lot of scientists treat their discipline like a religion.

Could you be specific, please? Which scientists treat their discipline like a religion? I've been a scientist for a long time, and I've encountered few, if any, that fit that description.

 

[sfs]

But what on earth is the empirical evidence for ToE?

The empirical evidence consists of millions of individual facts in biogeography, paleontology, genetics, comparative anatomy and molecular biology. It's contained in tens or hundreds of thousands of scientific papers published over the last century and a half by many thousands of scientists. If you really want to learn about the evidence, you're going to have to start doing some reading, at least of introductory sources. Where have you looked for the evidence?

 

[kiwimac]

Athiesm took off at a lightning speed when people found a way to explain how the world came to be without God. Evolution does not work with religion. Either u believe in one or the other. The reason for this is that the whole reason that Jesus came to earth was to redeem us of the sin that adam made by taking the apple. If evolution is to be believed, this shows that this event never happened, and other people were on earth at the time. If we are to believe Evolution, it puts the bible in a place where people (christians) can say that it is not complete. THis discreditis the whole bible. Also remember that Charles Darwin didnt do anything for anyone, he was out there to make money. However Jesus Died on the cross for our sins.

The Genesis accounts are likely parables. The Bible is not a text-book about HOW the universe came to be but WHY it was created.

Oh & BTW Darwin was not out to make money. He was unpaid for almost all of his voyages.

 

[gluadys]

The thing about evolution as described in the modern way is the emphasis on "random mutation" that totaly takes God out of the picture, anyone can see that good genetic traits are passed from one generation to the next and bad traits are weeded out, but how it is done? that is the question

What do you mean it "takes God out of the picture". Are you trying to dictate what God's work must look like?

Does the random assortment of your parent's genes as eggs and sperm were formed mean God was taken out of the picture when you were conceived?

 

[gluadys]

Evolution is a scientific theory. Science presupposes naturalism a priori. The Bible speaks of a supernatural origin. Thus science can never be fully compatible with the Bible.

Remember, science is not the same as logic.

No, science does not presuppose any particular philosophy. But science investigates nature and natural processes. While it does not deny the supernatural, it does not investigate it either, because the supernatural cannot be investigated with scientific tools. So, science has nothing to say about the supernatural pro or con.

 

[gluadys]

But what on earth is the empirical evidence for ToE?

All kinds of it. Enough to fill whole libraries. Observed mutations, observed natural selection, observed speciation, the twin nested hierarchy of the phylogenetic tree, the consistency of the fossil record with theoretical predictions, DNA analysis and genome comparison, endogenous retroviruses, and that is just scratching the surface. In fact, it is just scratching a small portion of the surface.

 

[pgp_protector]

Science is only good for looking in the box of our reality.
Anything outside our reality, science has no way to say anything about it, unless what is outside our reality enters it & makes it's presence known.

 

[gluadys]

There are four tenents of ToE and those are two of them. Check it out in the library. If you read my other posts in this thread you will see that I qouted it is possible that God evolved the body to the point where it could sustain a soul.
The reason why ToE and religion are not compatible is because the theory itself says God does not exist. trust me when I tell you that a lot of scientists treat their discipline like a religion.

I hope this helps.

Where did you get this "four tenets" (and it is "tenets" not "tenents"--look it up in the dictionary) from? There are too many books in the library for me to check them all without more specific direction.

Apparently you think that two of them are:

1. Humanity is not the centre of creation

and

2. God does not exist.

I have never seen an outline of the theory of evolution that includes these tenets.

Sound like you have come across a straw-man description of evolution and thought it was the real thing.

 

[Melethiel]

My biology textbook has several units on evolution, but nowhere do I see these four tenets listed. I am curious what they are. It might be that they are in my lecture notes, but those will take some time to dig up,

 

[kiwimac]

I too would be interested in knowing where this came from.

 

[theFijian]

I too would be interested in knowing where this came from.

A professional Creationist probably.

 

[shernren]

I've heard of four spiritual laws before, but four tenets of evolution?

sfs! Where have you been? =)

 

[shernren]

Here was a comment from the comments page of that quiz which I found most stimulating:

As a Christian who works in the biological sciences and accepts evolution as fundamental to our understanding and ability to explain biological systems, I was quite surprised at the high % of "no" responses. Is most of this opposition from Materialists who believe evolution disproves the existence of God, or from Literalists who believe evolution threatens God's sovereignty? It seems that whether or not you believe in God and whether or not you accept evolution, it would not be difficult to accept the idea that they could theoretically be harmonized, even if you personally reject one or the other.