the illusion of Evolution

[The Barbarian]

The big deal is no death before sin.

That's easy to test. God told Adam that he would die the day he ate from the tree. Adam eats and lives on physically for many years. So the death God was talking about was a spiritual one, not a physical one.

If God tells the truth, physical death existed long before Adam.

 

[Torah Keeper]

If you could show no change in the fossil record over time, for example, you would disprove the ToE.

Sure. They are called "living fossils".

Human fossils aren't found alongside dinosaurs, so we conclude that they didn't live together.

And you conclude wrong. There is an enormous amount of evidence worldwide for people seeing dinosaurs alive. Try taking a look around and reading history. Before Richard Owen renamed them "dinosaurs", they were called "dragons".

 

[Torah Keeper]

That's easy to test. God told Adam that he would die the day he ate from the tree. Adam eats and lives on physically for many years. So the death God was talking about was a spiritual one, not a physical one.

If God tells the truth, physical death existed long before Adam.

There are several possibilities here:

1. Adam began to die the day he ate the fruit. He lost his immortality. Bodily decay began.
2. One day is as 1,000 years to God. And 1,000 years is as one day. There are Old Testament and New Testament verses about this. A day on Earth is 24 hours, but a day in Heaven seems to be 1,000 years. Adam lived 930 years, and died before one day in Heaven had elapsed.
3. Adam's death was figurative, as you suggest.

 

[The Barbarian]

There are several possibilities here:

1. Adam began to die the day he ate the fruit. He lost his immortality. Bodily decay began.

If God is truthful, that is not a possibility. God said he would die the day he ate from the tree, not that he'd start to die and die many years later.

One day is as 1,000 years to God. And 1,000 years is as one day. There are Old Testament and New Testament verses about this. A day on Earth is 24 hours, but a day in Heaven seems to be 1,000 years. Adam lived 930 years, and died before one day in Heaven had elapsed.

You mean "1000 years is as a day to God?" If so, it completely removes any possibility of a literal Genesis, since plants could not wait 1000 years for Sun.

Adam's death was figurative, as you suggest.

There's nothing "figurative" about a spiritual death. It is more real and profound than mere physical death.

 

[The Barbarian]

Derek1111 said: ↑
If you could show no change in the fossil record over time, for example, you would disprove the ToE.

Sure. They are called "living fossils".

You have an example of a species that is identical to a fossil species, millions of years old? Show us that.
That's not a rhetorical request. Show us an example.

BTW, even of one or more such species were to exist, it would not erase the many, many examples of change over time in the fossil record.

 

[lifepsyop]

The big deal is no death before sin.

Or do you believe that for millions of years while evolution took place that there was no death?

The very reason that death is the last enemy to be placed under Christ's feet after the second coming, and will be done away with in the lake of fire is because death is an enemy that came in. It was a stranger, an interloper and enemy. God did not finish creating and look out at millions of years of bones and blood and rotting flesh and call it "very good", God didn't use death to achieve his goals. When God finished his creative work there was no death.

Death only came into being due to man's sin.

I've always thought that was one of the most important points. The time and mode of creation has never mattered as much as how theistic evolution rips out the foundation of the need to even have a Gospel... that death is an evil and corrupt thing to be conquered, and was clearly not a dominating influence in God's original creation before the fall.

If such foundational and overarching dynamics are nothing but literary devices, it renders the whole bible as little more than the same... allegory and symbolism and works of literature and philosophy to be inspired by. Only real in the imagination.

That's why theistic evolution is anti-Biblical. It rejects the metaphysical worldview presented in the Bible.

 

[The Barbarian]

I've always thought that was one of the most important points. The time and mode of creation has never mattered as much as how theistic evolution rips out the foundation of the need to even have a Gospel...

If you think so, you have no idea what "theistic evolution" is.

that death is an evil and corrupt thing to be conquered, and was clearly not a dominating influence in God's original creation before the fall.

For a Christian, death is no evil at all; it has no power over us. If Jesus came to save us from physical death, He failed. We will all die physically. The death that He defeated was a spiritual death, the death that Adam brought into the world, not the death that exists everywhere in nature, and did exist before Adam.

If such foundational and overarching dynamics are nothing but literary devices, it renders the whole bible as little more than the same... allegory and symbolism and works of literature and philosophy to be inspired by. Only real in the imagination.

I'm thinking that "if my interpretation of Genesis is not right, then Genesis is nothing but literary devices", is astoundingly presumptuous.

Even most creationists admit that there are other valid Christian interpretations of Genesis.

As YE Creationist Dr. Todd Wood cautioned his fellow creationists, "Don't make an idol of your own reasoning."

 

[Job 33:6]

The big deal is no death before sin.

Or do you believe that for millions of years while evolution took place that there was no death?

The very reason that death is the last enemy to be placed under Christ's feet after the second coming, and will be done away with in the lake of fire is because death is an enemy that came in. It was a stranger, an interloper and enemy. God did not finish creating and look out at millions of years of bones and blood and rotting flesh and call it "very good", God didn't use death to achieve his goals. When God finished his creative work there was no death.

Death only came into being due to man's sin.

Funny. God creates a tree of life which grants eternal life to those who eat of it. Yet somehow you think that death didn't exist beforehand. One has to wonder why you think God would create a tree of life if death didn't exist.

 

[SilverBear]

And most of them will also deny the Biblical accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Exodus. Even though those accounts are irrelevant to Evolution theory. These are professing Christians who really do not like the idea of God executing judgment upon the earth, and they find some kind of solace in a uniformitarian model of earth and human history.

Even with the overwhelming evidence of the destruction at Sodom that has been recently published, it's not going to make these Christians reevaluate their overarching philosophy of interpreting history (and actually entertain the possibility that the Old Testament could be true). Instead, they will just argue that the Biblical authors happened to witness a natural disaster and mythologized it as divine wrath from God.

Because it's not really about following the evidence, but instead maintaining a certain philosophy of uniformity of earth history. If God is not actually judging the earth, then us humans are in a lot more authority here to live the way we want to. That's why uniformitarianism is so attractive to professing Christians and Atheists alike.

finding that there was a meteor strike in the vicinity of the dead sea a few thousand years ago in not evidence of the destruction of Sodom

 

[SilverBear]

The data could be virtually anything and you would still be trying to force it into a model of an evolutionary, uniformitarian universe. That is the whole point of 'methodological naturalism' as an applied philosophy to science. You will keep arriving at the same essential conclusion because you cannot interpret reality any other way. "the evidence would be different".... and the conclusion would still be Evolution. Always Evolution. Only Evolution. The illusion is in force when you keep believing the data is leading you to that conclusion, when the conclusion was decided on beforehand.

The example I recall often is how the enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century were already enthralled by the idea of an evolutionary story of the universe and earth history before the advent of a 'scientific theory' for it. The constant pretending that it is all disinterested objective scientific research leading to more and more supposed confirmation of this naturalistic model of history is really nonsense.

what real data is there that doesn't support evolution?

 

[SilverBear]

Sure. They are called "living fossils".



And you conclude wrong. There is an enormous amount of evidence worldwide for people seeing dinosaurs alive. Try taking a look around and reading history. Before Richard Owen renamed them "dinosaurs", they were called "dragons".

and we will just ignore the fact that dinosaurs looked nothing like mythical dragons

 

[SilverBear]

There are several possibilities here:

1. Adam began to die the day he ate the fruit. He lost his immortality. Bodily decay began.
2. One day is as 1,000 years to God. And 1,000 years is as one day. There are Old Testament and New Testament verses about this. A day on Earth is 24 hours, but a day in Heaven seems to be 1,000 years. Adam lived 930 years, and died before one day in Heaven had elapsed.
3. Adam's death was figurative, as you suggest.

but if death didn't exist then Adam being warned about his death if he ate the fruit would be completely meaningless to him.

 

[coffee4u]

what real data is there that doesn't support evolution?

Scripture.

 

[The Barbarian]

Scripture.

Scripture isn't data. Revelation from God neither confirms nor denies evolution, protons, white blood cells, and many other things that are observably true.

As you seem to realize, there is no evidence that rules out evolution. How could there be? We see it going on all around us.

Is it possible you don't know what biological evolution is? What do you think it is?

 

[Cis.jd]

The devil laughs as Christians again and again prove to have no faith in scripture.

Revelation 18:4
Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “’Come out of her, my people,’ so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues;

No. The devil is just making you believe you have faith in scripture, when it's really just ignorance and refusal to accept things that contend to your interpretation or what you want scripture to be, hence you getting christianity laughed at and believed to be false.

The Bible is never to be used as a book of scientific revelation and you can't just go "there is this verse" to object evidence that has been presented.

You are quoting from people who lived thousands of years ago, who had no knowledge or even intention of revealing scientific truths, and then saying "it's from God" to make you feel secure in your arguments.

 

[Cis.jd]

If someone came along and 'proved' that Jesus never existed and your faith disappeared then you didn't have faith to begin with, you had belief, belief that was contingent on factors around you. Faith and belief are two different things. If you believe in God only because of facts and proof then you don't truly have faith.

You have a very bad understanding of what "faith" means. Why would you or anyone have faith in something that you know for fact isn't true, that makes no sense? That is like saying I have faith in Zeus, Vishnu, Thanos, or Batman even though I know they never existed.

Faith isn't continuously believing in something that is proven to be untrue, it's believing something to be true regardless of any lack of proof.

We believe God is fact because of what we see as evidence for him, whether it be academical to personal experience; we don't have proof but we can counter with compelling evidence to support our views on our theological beliefs.

 

[coffee4u]

You are quoting from people who lived thousands of years ago, who had no knowledge or even intention of revealing scientific truths, and then saying "it's from God" to make you feel secure in your arguments.

2 Timothy 3:16-17


16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

 

[coffee4u]

You have a very bad understanding of what "faith" means. Why would you or anyone have faith in something that you know for fact isn't true, that makes no sense? That is like saying I have faith in Zeus, Vishnu, Thanos, or Batman even though I know they never existed.

Faith isn't continuously believing in something that is proven to be untrue, it's believing something to be true regardless of any lack of proof.

We believe God is fact because of what we see as evidence for him, whether it be academical to personal experience; we don't have proof but we can counter with compelling evidence to support our views on our theological beliefs.

Except it hasn't been proven.
Running tests on base assumptions isn't proof when the base assumptions can't be proved.

 

[Cis.jd]

Except it hasn't been proven.
Running tests on base assumptions isn't proof when the base assumptions can't be proved.

It actually has been, you just don't want to acknowledge it has because of your religious bias. You also shouldn't be pointing fingers at what doesn't have proof, you know genesis does not have any proof and you made a post as to why its not biggie to have no evidence/proof for scripture.

 

[Cis.jd]

2 Timothy 3:16-17


16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

But its not made to for the purpose of explaining the physical universe and not all interpretation is from God. Yours is not. You do not use scripture to validate/invalidate science because its not used for that and you'll just end up making the Bible to be looked as false.