Question for Christians who believe in Evolution

[hedrick]

So.. the consensus opinion of the archeology institutions is a total rejection of the accounts of any supernatural events in the Old Testament. Is that basically where you stand?

Archaeologists can’t really help you with miracles, one way or the other. It is about history. The consensus is that the OT history, at least before the kings, isn’t very accurate.

 

[coffee4u]

FYI, but if you're going to play the evolution = eugenics cards, then surely you must accept that lots of people have used religion (including Christianity) to justify some pretty horrendous acts.

Glass houses and all that...

I am sure they have, people add-in and make up their own things, but that isn't what the Bible itself teaches. Jesus tells us to love others.
Mark 12:30
30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. 31 And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

 

[coffee4u]

. The nazis and so called racial eugenicists were wrong about human evolution. The point being that they were wrong . We know better so why are you bringing it up now . That’s called beating a dead horse.
Theres is a lot of evidence for common descent and none for the biblical version of creation . When creationists come up with evidence for their claims then I’ll re examine this issue . I’m not holding my breath as so far they’ve only managed to lie, use incorrect techniques and misinform.

Because junk like that is still believed by neo-nazis, white supremacists, KKK etc. So it is still relevant. Wiki.

White supremacy or white supremacism is the racist belief that white people are superior to people of other races and therefore should be dominant over them. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and often relies on pseudoscientific arguments. Like most similar movements such as neo-Nazism, white supremacists typically oppose members of other races as well as Jews.

Scientific racism employs anthropology (notably physical anthropology), anthropometry, craniometry, and other disciplines or pseudo-disciplines, in proposing anthropological typologies supporting the classification of human populations into physically discrete human races, that might be asserted to be superior or inferior.

 

[NBB]

Science cannot confirm or disconfirm supernatural phenomena. Creationists don’t like that as they think that scientists should just grandfather in stories from the Bible just because they are stories from the Bible. They might have done that in the 1700s but that won’t work now . A scientist nowadays will ask for confirming evidence before they’ll accept phenomena as real

Personal experience is better than science, and God can do a lot to us in that regard.

 

[Brightmoon]

Because junk like that is still believed by neo-nazis, white supremacists, KKK etc. So it is still relevant. Wiki.

White supremacy or white supremacism is the racist belief that white people are superior to people of other races and therefore should be dominant over them. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine of scientific racism and often relies on pseudoscientific arguments. Like most similar movements such as neo-Nazism, white supremacists typically oppose members of other races as well as Jews.

Scientific racism employs anthropology (notably physical anthropology), anthropometry, craniometry, and other disciplines or pseudo-disciplines, in proposing anthropological typologies supporting the classification of human populations into physically discrete human races, that might be asserted to be superior or inferior.

. Just because they believe it doesn’t mean it’s true . All human populations ( what some people call races) show a mix of ancestral traits and derived (more modern ) traits . For example white males tend to have brow ridges . African males do not . Brow ridges are an ancestral trait ( its shows up in other Hominidae) and a smooth brow is the more derived trait

 

[NBB]

Personal experience is better than science, and God can do a lot to us in that regard.

Yes it is, anyway science origin is the scientists experience, if there were no consciounsess or intelligence and trusty personal experience there would be no science, i don't see what the 'funny' rating is about.

 

[Brightmoon]

I'm aware of how evolutionists have chosen to try and interpret the data... (after initially insisting it couldn't exist and that YEC's are stupid for even suggesting it, bu let's forget that part)

So are we going to sit here and pretend there was ever going to be any conclusion other than one that accorded with the Evolutionary worldview? ..... C'mon... let's be real. We all know the answer to that, we're just supposed to pretend it isn't the case. We're supposed to pretend Evolutionists are actually testing their worldview every day... but that's a myth... the fundamental worldview is never up for debate, and never was. Because it is a slave to 'natural causation' as the explanation of all phenomena.

any new technique is going to be queried until all questions about it are answered . This is as it should be. What is the point of using a technique that you don’t understand? YEC as a scientific reality failed in the mid 1700s when geology started to become more understandable . YEC was a failed idea long before Darwin came along and that was over 150 years ago . Why should we think this is a viable idea in the 21st century? Especially since it not the interpretation of the facts that’s at odds , YEC just has no evidence for itself . Natural phenomena has consequences Noah’s global flood? Fine , where’s the global sediment layer ? , what happened to the extremely high temperature that the earths surface would have become if this had actually happened? Where are the Genetic bottlenecks in every species that lived then? etc etc etc

 

[Brightmoon]

Yes it is, anyway science origin is the scientists experience, if there were no consciounsess or intelligence and trusty personal experience there would be no science, i don't see what the 'funny' rating is about.

. There’s a difference between the personal experience of say redoing an experiment repeatedly until you’re sure you understand what going on and the personal experience of being told what to think even if it’s a denial of reality . Scientists do the first and creationists indulge in the second

 

[coffee4u]

. Just because they believe it doesn’t mean it’s true . All human populations ( what some people call races) show a mix of ancestral traits and derived (more modern ) traits . For example white males tend to have brow ridges . African males do not . Brow ridges are an ancestral trait ( its shows up in other Hominidae) and a smooth brow is the more derived trait

Did I say it was true? I'm the creationist, I don't believe in ancestral traits or any of that so-called evolution nonsense.

The point of posting that was, that type of racist belief came from a belief in evolution. Not saying everyone thinks that way, but a group of people can hardly think they are 'more evolved' unless they have evolution as their base world view. It prompted that line of thought that certain groups had evolved or developed further than others.

 

[ICONO'CLAST]

Every supernatural event happened as written.
Any denial of such truth is unbelief.
Jesus spoke of them as literal events.

 

[lifepsyop]

The miracles were real. If God through Christ created the universe then why would it be difficult for Him to control nature, to supersede physics at certain times. When Christ stated that he could call angels to defend Him, was he lying?

I'm in full agreement there. Why is it so strange to think the God who created the heavens and earth also did relatively minor things like parting the Red Sea. And why do we doubt Jesus' testimony about the presence of angels and demons throughout the earth? Why do we doubt Jesus when he said Moses wrote about him? (John 5:46)

The common answer seems to be "Science" .... that Science says the major events in the OT are myths, especially Genesis because "Science" has revealed the truth of Evolution.. and so Christians start believing that God worked through this thing called Evolution....

But then when we examine what "Science" actually is, we find the stated institution-wide objective is a purely naturalistic interpretation of all reality and its history. (methodological naturalism) It *must* reject the Biblical narrative because the Bible does not conform to its philosophical foundation of naturalism.

It really is that simple but for some reason Evolutionists are not too keen on advertising that aspect of their belief system.......and so instead we are constantly served the popular science-myth that a rejection of the Biblical narrative was arrived at by a careful examination of the data... which is totally false because it's always been a game of force-feeding data into a naturalistic worldview from the get-go...

The sad thing is that so many Christians have been led to believe that God is speaking to them through the 'book of nature'... when they've really been looking through the eyes of naturalist philosophers who have always been committed to interpreting a history of the earth that is sterilized of any non-naturalistic operation or interaction.

 

[hedrick]

The question isn't whether God can but whether he did. And the major objection to the Red Sea isn't from science, it's from history. It really doesn't seem that the OT history is an accurate account of the origins of Israel.

 

[lifepsyop]

And what, exactly, is wrong with a naturalistic world view?

Besides being totally contradictory to the Biblical worldview?

That little issue aside, I don't necessarily have a problem with the naturalistic worldview... what I have a problem with is the popular myth in how the naturalistic worldview was arrived at. We are told it was the consequence of an overwhelming accumulation of evidence... when in truth the philosophy of naturalism always commanded how data was allowed to be interpreted in the first place.

**There was never going to be any view of earth history other than a naturalistic Evolutionary one, because that conclusion was pre-loaded into modern naturalistic science to begin with.**

 

[lifepsyop]

Archaeologists can’t really help you with miracles, one way or the other. It is about history. The consensus is that the OT history, at least before the kings, isn’t very accurate.

Archeology like any modern science is first and foremost a slave to methodological naturalism. For example, modern Archeology cannot possibly interpret humanity through any other lens but the naturalistic evolutionary one of man emerging from primates over millions of years and gradually developing knowledge and skills over a long period of time... (the primitive caveman story)

The Biblical narrative of man being created and provided knowledge by God is rejected from the outset because it does not conform with a naturalistic evolutionary worldview. It's that simple.

Modern Archaeology has no choice but to reject the Biblical worldview because it is philosophically commanded to do so. (Of course it can still grudgingly accept bits and pieces of Biblical history as true, as long as it bows down and conforms to the greater evolutionary narrative of a purely natural rise of man.)

 

[Akita Suggagaki]

From Naturalism website:
If you don’t believe in anything supernatural – gods, ghosts, immaterial souls and spirits – then you subscribe to naturalism, the idea that nature is all there is. The reason you’re a naturalist is likely that, wanting not to be deceived, you put stock in empirical, evidence-based ways of justifying beliefs about what’s real, as for instance exemplified by science. You probably (and rightly) hold that such beliefs are usually more reliable and more objective than those based in uncorroborated intuition, revelation, religious authority or sacred texts. Kept honest by philosophy and critical thinking, science reveals a single manifold of existence, what we call nature, containing an untold myriad of interconnected phenomena, from quarks to quasars. Nature is simply what we have good reason to believe exists.
Worldview Naturalism in a Nutshell | Naturalism.org

I guess I go with a hybrid because I do believe in God who can do "miracles". But the God I believe in is not beyond nature. In fact Nature shares in God's being. And there is a great deal of nature we do not yet understand or even have a hint about. So there is plenty of room for God, ghost spirits or whatever. There is also room for events we do not regularly see. but we must be very careful because just wanting to believe something does not make it real.

OT materials are for me great story telling with some history mixed in. The Gospels have their share of creative narrative. I think we all decide for ourselves where we want to draw the line, what to take as historical fact and what to take as some kind of literary form.

 

[Brightmoon]

Did I say it was true? I'm the creationist, I don't believe in ancestral traits or any of that so-called evolution nonsense.

The point of posting that was, that type of racist belief came from a belief in evolution. Not saying everyone thinks that way, but a group of people can hardly think they are 'more evolved' unless they have evolution as their base world view. It prompted that line of thought that certain groups had evolved or developed further than others.

racist thinking was used as a justification for enslaving and exploiting darker skinned peoples long before Darwin was born . Most of that actually came from the Bible in western civilization lands, based on a ridiculous story about one of Noah’s sons

 

[coffee4u]

racist thinking was used as a justification for enslaving and exploiting darker skinned peoples long before Darwin was born . Most of that actually came from the Bible in western civilization lands, based on a ridiculous story about one of Noah’s sons

All shades of people have at one time or another been enslaved, not just darker-skinned people. Evolution though gave people a justification for it, one based on science. Just because academia has debunked something does not stop the general population clinging to it.

As to the Bible and Noah's son Ham, nothing in that passage of scripture even mentions race or skin colour. It is a far stretch of the imagination for people to make this about the slave trade to the US.
People love trying to make the Bible fit into whatever it is they want instead of taking what is plainly said. Again they were looking for justification.

Ham was the father of Canaan and we do know that the Canaanites were a very evil nation. They were also middle-eastern, many of whom were conquered by Joshua when Israel took the Promised Land. No connection to the African slave trade what so ever.

 

[Brightmoon]

Wishful thinking on your part . The American civil war was around 1860- 1865 . Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species in England in 1859. Are you saying that the American and European slave trade and the racist / religious justification for it only took one year especially since slavery was banned in Great Britain by 1833 and in France by 1817.

 

[coffee4u]

Wishful thinking on your part . The American civil war was around 1860- 1865 . Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species in England in 1859. Are you saying that the American and European slave trade and the racist / religious justification for it only took one year especially since slavery was banned in Great Britain by 1833 and in France by 1817.

Trade between Europeans, Middle-Easterns and Africans of goods and people had been going on for centuries before the one to the US. I was not saying it was all based on the belief that one race was superior or on religious grounds. In most cases, it was Africans who sold Africans, so it wasn't being done for either of those reasons but probably purely for money. As in most situations, there are multiple sides to it.

The theory of one race being more evolved was around long before Darwin, Darwin's father wrote on it as well. Often the two views of both science and religion were entwined. Each one bolstered the other.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...e6aef0-5aeb-11e9-a00e-050dc7b82693_story.html

Darwin simply made it popular
Darwin, race and gender
"he still divided humanity into distinct races according to differences in skin, eye or hair colour. He was also convinced that evolution was progressive, and that the white races—especially the Europeans—were evolutionarily more advanced than the black races, thus establishing race differences and a racial hierarchy."

He also wrote flattering things about women too.
"the formation of her skull is said to be intermediate between the child and the man” Darwin 1871
It gave people a reason to keep slavery or mistreatment of other races as well as women going for 'real reasons', scientific ones.

 

[danielmears]

In considering the accounts of miracles in the Old Testament (e.g. the Exodus Red Sea parting, the supernatural destruction of Jericho, Samson's supernatural strength, Elijah summoning fire down on God's enemies, etc. ) There are still miraculous signs and wonders but that does not get any attention from the media. The old miracles were also over thousands or at least hundreds of years apart.. So yes. I believe they occurred! Spiritual law one day will be shown to be just as scientific, actually superseding what is currently deemed, "possible".under physical laws.

Do you believe these are generally all mythologized stories? As in, the stories are there to convey a spiritual message, but the actual supernatural events did not actually happen?

I am curious because most of these events (after you get through the first few books of Genesis) have little to do with the basic Evolutionary story of the development of life on earth, and yet I wonder if those Christians who believe in Evolution, also tend to have a problem accepting any of the major accounts of supernatural events in the Old Testament as real, actual events?