Theistic Evolution

JacksBratt said:

Oooooohh Kay....

Jesus died and rose on the third day...

How do you interpret that?

God formed Adam from the dust. God made Eve from Adam's rib.

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I can see where it is confusing for you. You think that the Bible must never have parables. But the Bible itself says that it does.

stevevw said:

For me I think a big difference here is that there were eyewitnesses that seen this and then either wrote this down directly or the authors spoke to those who seen it happen. Whereas there are no eyewitnesses of creation. It is a story that has come in a vision or revelation which can be open to more interpretation.

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So, you are saying that "the word of God" is not to be taken as truth due to "no eyewitnesses"?

You do realize that much of the OT, especially the parts of the creation, are believed to be dictated to Moses by God Himself... right?

Not only that, but, the age of people in the times of Adam and Noah were so long that Adam knew Methuselah and Methuselah knew Noah's son, Shem. Shem lived long enough to know Issac...

This makes the story of Creation a very fresh knowledge to Issac.... Adam telling Methuselah. Methuselah telling Shem who told Issac.

That's like your Grandfather telling you something that his grandfather told him...and you telling your grandson...... But look at the years it covers then compared to now...

That's very new eyewitness first hand knowledge of creation.... told to Issac.

It could even be closer than that as Noah was born very soon after Adam died...

You can toss out the whole idea of "this was a story told over and over, over a many generations".... as a proof of errors in the facts.

The Barbarian said:

I can see where it is confusing for you. You think that the Bible must never have parables. But the Bible itself says that it does.

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No, I have no trouble with "parables" when they are "parables". And, I take the word of God to be solid truth of events when they are written as such.

I don't hold on to some "miraculous" "supernatural" "Jaw dropping" events.. with white knuckles because my eternal life depends on it... and... toss everything else out because my professor or some other human in a white lab coat.... who doesn't even believe in a God.... told me so.

Twisting scripture to fit Atheistic, Darwinian, evolution....is not my way.

That is putting the minuscule pittance of knowledge of the created... before the all knowing omniscient wisdom of the creator. Seems a little arrogant.

stevevw said:

So what about when Jesus says

Matthew 18.9
And if your eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

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What about it.... this is a totally different idea.. This is a concept.. not a written account of an event that happened and then being disputed...

We know Christ said it...But.. it is not the same as recounting an event and arguing over whether it was an actual event ... or ... a story.

Look at it this way....

A sports hero is telling the audience what one should do in a certain sport situation.
Say..... a football hero.. saying.."in that situation.. you should throw to the sideline and take the loss of a down".

That is different than the announcer stating "Joe X ran the ball for 70 yards for the touchdown on an interception".
One is a concept... one is report of an event..

stevevw said:

But even so, there is still a big degree of accepting supernatural events regardless of how you think it happened. Theistic evolution requires that God intervened and began the process.

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Exactly... I... do.... not... believe.... that God "intervened".. I think that creation was a direct and premeditated action of our God. Not anything else.

stevevw said:

As mentioned for some evolution cannot happen unless there were some laws and codes put in place by God so evolution is reliant on guidance by God rather than just a chance, blind and random process.

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If you understand that.. then why would you mix the musings of mere created beings with the stated word of the creator?

Does the little "Lego" man know more than the 8 year old who made it? Does the marble statue of "David" know more than Michelangelo? Does "the Thinker" know more than Rodin........ Preposterous.

stevevw said:

So regardless of which version people believe there is still the intervention of God.

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Actually, it is not "intervention" of God...

A builder does not "intervene" in the construction of a house, barn or even a car or airplane.... It is designed and built as direct result of that design.

stevevw said:

But just as important is that God uses evolution to some degree to create life.

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No evolution ever created "life" ... they cannot even do it in a lab... Life is only from the creator....

stevevw said:

You support a form of evolution that creates all the variations of dogs and birds and insects we see that were not there, to begin with which you say come from pre-existing genetic info.

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Yes... this is evident even today.. We took a pure bred Golden retriever and she mated with our border Coli... We got a litter of "Golies"... Very smart black dogs, like Border Coli's, with the lovableness of Golden retrievers.

However, there is not an infinite string of this.. eventually you will end up with a dead end and the offspring will be unable to reproduce.

stevevw said:

It is just that some take this back to an original universal ancestor but it is still based on the same principle.

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Not even close.. First.. you have an asexual being... morphing to a being that has two sexes... Why? any being that only needs one existing living being of it's kind to maintain it's line.... why... and how... would it morph to two sexes and then.. if you only have one left.. it will go extinct.

Second... you have a living being... how did it start in the first place.. with all the complex parts that make up the single cell... to then be able to replicate?


Third... A living being.. turned into both plant and animal?

The list of impossibilities are endless.

This takes much more "Faith" than the written and solid truth of Genesis.

stevevw said:

I agree Gods word is truth but as we have seen not all the words in the bible are literal truth

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Yes, they are literal truth when describing literal events that took place.

They are only demoted to allegory when they conflict with the mere musing of men.

stevevw said:

and are the perspective of a human trying to portray a vision or revelation of God or are explaining events in ancient times so they will see things through a lens that influences their descriptions.

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I could except this if the word of God was not the word of God and was the writing of a man..

However, we are told that the Bible is the God breathed, God inspired Words of Himself..The Canon... It's not just the writing of a well educated man. Or the history written by some bystander or third party.

stevevw said:

For example, when they said something occurred that involved the entire world how could they know what the entire world was. For them, it was as far as they could see or had heard of or it meant other things like a population. So when they talked about the whole world it is not taken literally as the entire circumference of the earth.

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Again, this is not similar to the Bible saying that fire came down from heaven and burned up all the alter in front of Elijah....Which is a solid fact.

And, again.. the things that are being demoted to allegorical, mythical, parables... are only done to conform to the mere musings of the Darwinian, atheistic, evolutionists.

JacksBratt said:

No, I have no trouble with "parables" when they are "parables".

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I see your denial. But you still don't accept parables when they disagree with your new doctrines.

I don't hold on to some "miraculous" "supernatural" "Jaw dropping" events.. with white knuckles because my eternal life depends on it..

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Actually, it does. You'd better accept the Resurrection as a literal happening.

Twisting scripture to fit Atheistic, Darwinian, evolution....is not my way.

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For the same reason twisting scripture to fit the Easter Bunny isn't your way. Neither of these exist. Darwin, for example, thought God created the first living things.

You are putting the man-made doctrine of YE creationism... before the all knowing omniscient wisdom of the creator. Seems a little arrogant to me.

The Barbarian said:

I can see where it is confusing for you. You think that the Bible must never have parables. But the Bible itself says that it does.

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Oh, I know that the Bible has parables... I just believe that Genesis is not one of them.. I has none of the characteristics of a parable.

I also know, just as well, that Jesus walking on water is not a parable.. nor is Him turning water to wine, healing the blind and crippled or casting out demons.. feeding more than 5000 people with five loaves and two fish, with 12 baskets of leftovers or dying on a cross and rising from the dead.

Jesus told parables... He did not live one and when He created the world.. it was recorded as the truth that it was... not a parable.

So, hold tight to the gospel... it may be the only thing that you believe to be true.. but it will save you.

The Barbarian said:

I see your denial. But you still don't accept parables when they disagree with your new doctrines.

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Parables are stories that teach us.. Jesus used them. None of His parables disagree with solid biblical doctrine.

The Barbarian said:

Actually, it does. You'd better accept the Resurrection as a literal happening.

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Oh, I am certain that the Resurrection is a literal happening.. it is as literal as God forming Adam from the dust and breathing life into his body.. then making Eve from Adam's rib.... and the six days of creation.

The Barbarian said:

For the same reason twisting scripture to fit the Easter Bunny isn't your way. Neither of these exist. Darwin, for example, thought God created the first living things.

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Scripture doesn't have an "Easter bunny".

Darwin was right.. Christ did create the first living things.. He also created every other living thing.. In fact.. "All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made." John 1:3.

But, Darwin got one thing wrong... He did it in six days.. not billions of years. God didn't need what men think is necessary.

The Barbarian said:

You are putting the man-made doctrine of YE creationism... before the all knowing omniscient wisdom of the creator. Seems a little arrogant to me.

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The way I read Genesis.. God didn't need the billions of years that Darwin thinks were needed.

The way I see it... God is Omnipotent.

The way I see it.. God could do it. God said He did it... so... God did it... In six days.

Sorry if you think that this was beyond His abilities.

JacksBratt said:

Oh, I know that the Bible has parables... I just believe that Genesis is not one of them..

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It's fine if you believe that. As for me, I know Genesis is true. The notion that it's a literal history is a modern revision that rejects His word.

However, that's not what will save you or lose you. Jesus, in Matthew 25, made it very clear how He would decide on your eternal home. If you don't approve of the way He created things, it doesn't matter.

JacksBratt said:

Oh, I am certain that the Resurrection is a literal happening..

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Then why is it so hard for you to accept Genesis His way?

Sorry if you think that this was beyond His abilities.

The Barbarian said:

Then why is it so hard for you to accept Genesis His way?

Sorry if you think that this was beyond His abilities.

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?

JacksBratt said:

But, Darwin got one thing wrong... He did it in six days.. not billions of years. God didn't need what men think is necessary.

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Spot on, as you quoted already from John 1:1, all things were made through Jesus. Jesus IS the word of God.

Jesus said, "Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?" (Matthew 19:4-5).

So two points:

1) The words here affirm what is written in Genesis with the creation of Adam and Eve.
2) Jesus said, "Have you not read..."

This leans very heavily in support of the creation account being taken at narrative (not a parable, not poetry, not allegory, not borrowed Babylonian myth, etc...) because #1, the one who created everything is affirming what is stated in Genesis. Also, #2, why say "Have you not read..." if one is just reading some run-on metaphor that somehow means something other than what is written? How inane (silly, stupid, etc...) that would be. If; however, the words do in fact indicate exactly what is written then the argument of "have you not read" makes a whole lot of sense. Further, the finger of God wrote the 10 commandments and it says again in Exodus 20:8-11 that the Sabbath was the be observed on the 7th day just as the Lord worked for six days and rested on the seventh. I hope every human ever born wasn't born during the "billion-year period" falling on the "7th day" or every day we all get up and drive into work we're just breaking the heck out of that commandment--just absolutely running it into the ground. But again, if the days are just days then the commandment makes sense, is reasonable, is capable of being performed by mere humans in the mere span of 3 score and 10 years.

People can make up whatever they want the Bible to mean but either we believe what is clearly written and being affirmed, or we believe what we've invented and twisted in our heads and it is no longer the God of the Bible we are holding in highest esteem, honor and glory, but rather our own vain pursuits of worldly wisdom which is but foolishness to God.

It is clear that evolution is a farce, even the ID folks like Stephen Meyer, M. Behe, and others are rejecting it as well... this is not just something rejected by creationists. S. Meyer even goes into length as to why TE is not viable for supporting evolution:


We need to stop trying to simply 'invoke' God as a rescue device for the failed hypothesis of evolution. The arguments in favor of this become much like Dawkins' arguments of design like it is just the appearance of intelligent design even though there is not an intelligent designer. So just reverse this reasoning for theistic evolution: "It's from an intelligent and loving creator, it just appears as random, atheistic, almost always deleterious mutations." God did not cause random mutations over billions of years any more than he is out turning off traffic lights so as to cause car accidents.

NobleMouse said:

It is clear that evolution is a farce,

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Just a directly-observed natural process.

even the ID folks like Stephen Meyer, M. Behe, and others are rejecting it as well...

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Well, let's take a look...
I'm an 'evolutionist' in the sense that I do think natural selection explains some things ... But from what I see, the evidence only shows natural selection explaining rather small changes, and I see profound difficulties in thining that it explains much more than trivial changes. It is fine by me if common descent is indeed true, and there is some sort of designed program to power changes over time (i.e., evolution). And I think things like pseudogenes are strong arguments for common descent ...."
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

IDer, and Fellow of the Discovery Institute, Michael Denton
It is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school." According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God's direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world--that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies. In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny (my emphasis)

this is not just something rejected by creationists. S. Meyer even goes into length as to why TE is not viable for supporting evolution:

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Unfortunately for Meyer, God is not obligated to follow his decisions. Evolution, as Denton and Behe observe, is a fact, regardless of what we might think about it.

stevevw said:

Not ignoring things just caught up with other stuff at the moment. Will be back soon.

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I'll be looking forward to speaking with you again.

If Theistic Evolution is true, then God in heaven has intervened into human evolutionary development on earth in a supremely significant way.

If so, there would be supremely significant effects of such a supremely significant causal agent

If "God" has been an input, something "Godlike" must have been an output

Looking around, compared to all other known life on earth and throughout the universe, do humans seem to be "in a league all of their own" in comparison to everything else?

What else builds mile-high buildings and lands on other planets?

Couldn't the marked difference in "output" between humans and everything else known imply a markedly different "input" ?

As if only humans have been crafted or "cultivated" (a more evolution-like term) by God in heaven?

According to the fossil record, about 2 million years ago witnessed the appearance of:

• fire
• stone tools
• language (human-like hyoid bones)
• rapid brain growth

Up until then, pre-human ancestors like Australopithecus (Lucy) had only evolved physically (bipedalism) not mentally (chimp-sized brains).

Then, evolutionarily quickly, fire + stone tools + language + bigger brains all appeared

Marked momentous changes ("output") imply commensurately marked influences ("input")? Divine Hand? "By the claw, the lion is revealed" ?

stevevw said:

Can someone please explain to me what Theistic Evolution is. Are there different versions of this. If Theistic Evolution is just the world view version of evolution with God thrown in as the initiator of life then what is the difference between Theistic Evolution and the world view version. Isn't this just reducing Gods role down to abiogenesis which is not really a part of evolution anyway as evolution begins at the point the first single living cell is in existence already? If Theistic evolution starts after God created the first single-celled life then there is no need to include God at all as this is irrelevant to evolution.

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Well ... there you have it.