Gnosticism and the belief in Evolution

lifepsyop · Sep 28, 2022

lifepsyop said:
Did God give the first two humans immortal bodies as well?

I'm assuming you believe in the immortality of the human body because after he died, Jesus' physical body was resurrected to a new glorified one.

But isn't there at least some 'spatiality' involved in the corruption of their physical human bodies when they sinned?

Isn't the whole point of Jesus physically rising from the dead with a new glorified body, (that his disciples could actually touch), is that he is restoring what was corrupted when man first sinned?

I am genuinely curious of your response to these questions, whenever you find the time to answer. Thanks.

The Barbarian · Sep 28, 2022

lifepsyop said:
But isn't there at least some 'spatiality' involved in the corruption of their physical human bodies when they sinned?

I happen to be very impressed with the way the human body works. There was no corruption of the human body; nature continued as it did. Creation changed for us, in a spiritual way, in our estrangement from God. If we return to Him, there is nothing corrupt in nature for us at all.

Adam and Eve were never immortal. Indeed, at the end of Genesis 3, God expresses concern that they might become so, and takes steps to see that they remain mortal as He intended.

lifepsyop · Sep 28, 2022

The Barbarian said:
I happen to be very impressed with the way the human body works. There was no corruption of the human body; nature continued as it did. Creation changed for us, in a spiritual way, in our estrangement from God. If we return to Him, there is nothing corrupt in nature for us at all.

Adam and Eve were never immortal. Indeed, at the end of Genesis 3, God expresses concern that they might become so, and takes steps to see that they remain mortal as He intended.

I guess the most important question is do you believe Jesus was resurrected into a new physical body?

And does your eschatology involve the physical resurrection of believers into a new physical creation at the end of this age?

The Barbarian · Sep 28, 2022

lifepsyop said:
I guess the most important question is do you believe Jesus was resurrected into a new physical body?

He had the same body that hung on the cross. How do we know that?

Ask Thomas. Jesus had him check his hands and side for the wounds he received while being crucified. Same body, but glorified.

lifepsyop said:
And does your eschatology involve the physical resurrection of believers into a new physical creation at the end of this age?

We acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, [and] we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
Nicene Creed

So what does that mean? We will have a body as we do now, but a glorified body, not subject to decay and death.

lifepsyop · Sep 29, 2022

The Barbarian said:
He had the same body that hung on the cross. How do we know that?

Ask Thomas. Jesus had him check his hands and side for the wounds he received while being crucified. Same body, but glorified.

Yes indeed

The Barbarian said:
We acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins, [and] we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
Nicene Creed

So what does that mean? We will have a body as we do now, but a glorified body, not subject to decay and death.

and I take it you do not view this as any kind of Restoration of creation, or the returning of a broken creation to its renewed state? (since you believe the original humans were evolved animals, always subject to death and decay since their beginning)

So in this view, the first time around, after 13+ billion years of natural processes had elapsed, God selects the evolved humans and gives them a soul, with the promise that if they followed him, they would eventually escape the death and decay of the natural world and inherit a new glorified creation... something like that?

The Barbarian · Sep 29, 2022

lifepsyop said:
and I take it you do not view this as any kind of Restoration of creation, or the returning of a broken creation to its renewed state?

God said it was good, and would not break it just to get even with two disobedient humans. He got it right the first time and that hasn't changed. We don't get a lot of detail from God on what it is when we come into His kingdom. And I'm not inclined to speculate.

lifepsyop · Sep 30, 2022

The Barbarian said:
God said it was good, and would not break it just to get even with two disobedient humans. He got it right the first time and that hasn't changed. We don't get a lot of detail from God on what it is when we come into His kingdom. And I'm not inclined to speculate.

You don't find it strange to be allegorizing the fall/curse (i.e. the fall was only spiritual and the physical body was totally unaffected) ... but then to be fundamentally shifting the view to accept physical/bodily transformation at the resurrection at the end of the age?

If we are experiencing God's kingdom bodily at the end of the age, and worshipping God in our resurrected bodily state... why would you look back at the beginning and allegorize Adam's bodily presence in the Garden of Eden, and say none of that was really happening in corporeal form, and it was all metaphors for a soul being added to evolved primates?

I agree that because of the lack of details, there is a lot we don't understand about this Edenic state presented in Genesis, but to render it all down to non-physical allegory seems highly problematic in light of a belief in bodily resurrection when Jesus returns... and the fact this whole story of God and the salvation of his people revolves around physical flesh and blood, bodily resurrection of Jesus.

2PhiloVoid · Sep 30, 2022

lifepsyop said:
You don't find it strange to be allegorizing the fall/curse (i.e. the fall was only spiritual and the physical body was totally unaffected) ... but then to be fundamentally shifting the view to accept physical/bodily transformation at the resurrection at the end of the age?

If we are experiencing God's kingdom bodily at the end of the age, and worshipping God in our resurrected bodily state... why would you look back at the beginning and allegorize Adam's bodily presence in the Garden of Eden, and say none of that was really happening in corporeal form, and it was all metaphors for a soul being added to evolved primates?

I agree that because of the lack of details, there is a lot we don't understand about this Edenic state presented in Genesis, but to render it all down to non-physical allegory seems highly problematic in light of a belief in bodily resurrection when Jesus returns... and the fact this whole story of God and the salvation of his people revolves around physical flesh and blood, bodily resurrection of Jesus.

Let's take another brief tact and consider this: that the answer to your questions here might simply be that we fellow Christians who lean toward Evolutionary thought do so because we've had different insights and different training, and we have read a number of books other than those that you've read. If you were to read and study what we've read and studied, then you might at least come to understand our angle of things and also see that what we're holding to ISN'T any form of Gnosticism. It's just science.

Does this sound sensible? I'm just trying to offer an olive branch of mutual consideration to you, brother.

The Barbarian · Sep 30, 2022

lifepsyop said:
You don't find it strange to be allegorizing the fall/curse (i.e. the fall was only spiritual and the physical body was totally unaffected)

God tells us that it was a spiritual death, not a physical on. He tells Adam that he will die the day he eats from that tree. Adam eats and lives on physically for many years thereafter. If we can trust God to tell the truth, it was a spiritual death.

lifepsyop said:
If we are experiencing God's kingdom bodily at the end of the age, and worshipping God in our resurrected bodily state... why would you look back at the beginning and allegorize Adam's bodily presence in the Garden of Eden, and say none of that was really happening in corporeal form, and it was all metaphors for a soul being added to evolved primates?

You're assuming that a spritual death is an allegory. That seems unjustified here.

lifepsyop said:
I agree that because of the lack of details, there is a lot we don't understand about this Edenic state presented in Genesis, but to render it all down to non-physical allegory seems highly problematic in light of a belief in bodily resurrection when Jesus returns.

It comes down to what God told Adam. You have a choice; believe it or don't believe it. That simple.

JimR-OCDS · Sep 30, 2022

lifepsyop said:
I guess the most important question is do you believe Jesus was resurrected into a new physical body?

And does your eschatology involve the physical resurrection of believers into a new physical creation at the end of this age?

Jesus rose from the dead and was glorified in heaven.

When he appeared to the Apostles, it wasn't a resurrected body, but a
glorified body, whatever that means.

Physical mortal physical bodies can't pass through walls, as Jesus' glorified
body did.

JimR-OCDS · Sep 30, 2022

Most scholars today accept that the creation story in Genesis was allegorical, not
literal. The Catholic Church accepts allegorical beliefs as well, but allows for
literal interpretation with some deprivation. A fundamentalists interpretation
would not be accepted.

lifepsyop · Oct 4, 2022

JimR-OCDS said:
Most scholars today accept that the creation story in Genesis was allegorical, not
literal.

Notably, the New Testament apostles and Jesus himself do not appear to share that view.

Because of "science", most scholars today also believe that the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, etc. were also allegorical and non-historical. But that is also not the view of the apostles.

lifepsyop · Oct 4, 2022

The apostles would likely regard our current orthodox view of "science" (in regard to naturalistic cosmology) as something like the creation beliefs coming out of the Epicurean greeks. The roman poet Ovid celebrates these ideas in his poem "Metamorphoses" during the time of Jesus' life on earth. Church fathers in the first couple of centuries were already having to deal with contending beliefs about the world spontaneously generating into existence. Like modern man today, many were worshipping an "unknown god" behind all of nature. The apostle Paul himself debated with the Epicureans in Athens)

What we don't want to admit today is that a lot of this stuff we call science today is more truly a philosophical tradition of viewing the origin of the universe in this kind of 'alchemical' way, where the cosmos springs out of a kind of elemental strife between hot and cold, which causes separations, and consolidations... more heatings and coolings as if within a cosmic refiner's furnace.

Evolutionists pick up on this theme in the 19th century, and settle on an idea that animals have arisen from the elemental forces of natural selection, where an increase in death produces the rise of fundamentally new forms and organizations of life. Molecules and Particles move this way and that for hundreds of millions of years, changing earth's environments and resultant selection pressures, and the organizational form that was once a fish is now a mammal racing across the forest floor. A continual refining system of new orders emerging from the chaotic void. With the enlightenment of transcendental man at its apex.

The theistic evolutionist Teilhard de Chardin would likely have fit right in with the Gnostic beliefs of the 1st century.

JimR-OCDS · Oct 4, 2022

lifepsyop said:
Notably, the New Testament apostles and Jesus himself do not appear to share that view.

Because of "science", most scholars today also believe that the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, etc. were also allegorical and non-historical. But that is also not the view of the apostles.

The Apostles did not know the science that we know today.

Jesus taught and spoke according to the intellect of his time. Had he
spoke of what is known about true creation of the universe, people
would've thought he was a nut and not listen to Him.
His purpose was not to teach science.

God did not send Jesus to change His mind about man, but to change
man's mind about God.

The Barbarian · Oct 4, 2022

JimR-OCDS said: ↑
Most scholars today accept that the creation story in Genesis was allegorical, not
literal.

lifepsyop said:
Notably, the New Testament apostles and Jesus himself do not appear to share that view.

Hmm... don't see anywhere in scripture that Jesus says the creation story was literal history, rather than an allegory. Must be one of those creationist "improvements" on His word.

The Barbarian · Oct 4, 2022

lifepsyop said:
The apostles would likely regard our current orthodox view of "science" (in regard to naturalistic cosmology) as something like the creation beliefs coming out of the Epicurean greeks.

Pretty much the way they would have viewed our current "orthodox view" about elements. That would have seemed like a myth to them to. And helipcentrism would also have seemed like a myth to them. For reasons that it's not hard to figure out.

God didn't enlighten them about the way the physical universe works. That's not what He came for.

Special creation is the "unknown God" of the creationists. Not all of them. Some, probably most, creationists are Christians like the rest of us. Others have made an idol of their new doctrines.

lifepsyop said:
Evolutionists pick up on this theme in the 19th century, and settle on an idea that animals have arisen from the elemental forces of natural selection

That's a common creationist superstition, but it's wrong. Animals evolved from other organisms. Would you like to learn about the evidence for that?

lifepsyop said:
What we don't want to admit today is that a lot of this stuff we call science today is more truly a philosophical tradition of viewing the origin of the universe in this kind of 'alchemical' way, where the cosmos springs out of a kind of elemental strife between hot and cold, which causes separations, and consolidations... more heatings and coolings as if within a cosmic refiner's furnace.

That's another creationist superstition. You seem to have this completely muddled up with the Big Bang, thermodynamics and odd revisions of Genesis.

lifepsyop said:
organization form that was once a fish is now a mammal racing across the forest floor.

As you learned some time ago, even informed YE creationists admit that there is "very good evidence" that tetrapods evoved from fish. Indeed, the first tetrapods we know of were fish.

lifepsyop said:
The theistic evolutionist Teilhard de Chardin would likely have fit right in with the Gnostic beliefs of the 1st century.

DeChardin's idea are neither science nor sound theology. Sorry. He's just another kind of creationist, who recognized that speciation happens.

lifepsyop · Oct 4, 2022

JimR-OCDS said:
The Apostles did not know the science that we know today.

But they did know it, or at least it would have been familiar to the apostles' contemporaries.

What we today call "science" are ideas very similar to the beliefs of ancient societies. A 1st century AD apostle would recognize the modern-day narrative of the evolution of the cosmos as quite similar to the philosophies of the Epicureans and others of this time period. The apostle Paul even directly converses with these people in the book of Acts.

Today we simply categorize this ancient philosophical tradition under the label of 'science'.

JimR-OCDS said:
Jesus taught and spoke according to the intellect of his time.

That's not really true, even Jesus' closest followers had great difficulty in accepting the kind of reality that Jesus was presenting them.

JimR-OCDS said:
Had he
spoke of what is known about true creation of the universe, people
would've thought he was a nut and not listen to Him.
His purpose was not to teach science.

Actually, the teaching of theistic evolution would have been both familiar and favorable to the greco-roman culture, as they had a long philosophical tradition going back centuries that is highly similar to how modern man views the origin of the world.

Jesus did repeatedly teach in demonstration that nature itself was something that bowed down to him. That was one of his 'science' lessons.

Also, Jesus's mission involved being captured and murdered by a bloodthirsty mob. I don't think being viewed as a crazy person were ever very big concerns. Jesus knew he was presenting truths that many of his own people would find impossible to believe, including salvation by his resurrection.

lifepsyop · Oct 4, 2022

The Barbarian said:
Pretty much the way they would have viewed our current "orthodox view" about elements. That would have seemed like a myth to them to.

and yet the evolutionary creation narrative believed by modern man would have been familiar to them.

we have made many technological advances but our cosmological traditions have remained largely the same.

The Barbarian said:
DeChardin's idea are neither science nor sound theology.

Neither is much of what we regard as 'science' today, especially in regard to where things came from.

For example, students across the world are being taught in biology classes that life naturally arose from non-life. There is little to no evidence that this type of abiogenesis is even possible, much less probable. But it is still being taught in science classes. Here we can see they are not being taught 'science' but instead are being initiated into an old philosophical tradition in the vein of Epicureanism... all forms in the world arising from the innate forces of nature acting on matter.

The Barbarian · Oct 4, 2022

lifepsyop said:
and yet the evolutionary creation narrative believed by modern man would have been familiar to them.

Particularly the Ionian scientists who first began what is now "the scientific method." Democritius, for example, did experiments that convinced him that matter is made of small particles he called "atoms."

And Archimedes' experiments that showed him how to determine if an object was pure gold were also part of that tradition. There were "creationists" in those days, too, who sneered at evidence and science. But the scientists were the ones who found more and more about the way the world works.

lifepsyop said:
we have made many technological advances but our cosmological traditions have remained largely the same.

Other than geocentrism and four elements, and planets being moved around by gods, and stars being tiny lamps in a dome overhead, and....

lifepsyop said:
For example, students across the world are being taught in biology classes that life naturally arose from non-life.

So God says.
Gen. 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds.

I believe Him. You should, too.

lifepsyop said:
There is little to no evidence that this type of abiogenesis is even possible, much less probable.

You're wrong about that. As we accumulate more and more evidence, it appears that God is right and the creationists are wrong. Would you like me to show you again?

lifepsyop · Oct 4, 2022

The Barbarian said:
Particularly the Ionian scientists who first began what is now "the scientific method." Democritius, for example, did experiments that convinced him that matter is made of small particles he called "atoms."

And Archimedes' experiments that showed him how to determine if an object was pure gold were also part of that tradition. There were "creationists" in those days, too, who sneered at evidence and science. But the scientists were the ones who found more and more about the way the world works.

Yes, which is why we can accomplish many feats of engineering with advanced technology today, but our cosmological traditions of how the universe came into being have remained fundamentally the same since ancient times, because Enlightenment philosophers carried those ancient traditions forward and slapped the label of 'science' on them.

The Barbarian said:
Other than geocentrism and four elements, and planets being moved around by gods, and stars being tiny lamps in a dome overhead, and....

there is a difference between structure and cosmogony... even a geocentric universe could have followed the same philosophical tradition and have been argued to have spontaneously sprang into existence.

Also, both the idea of "gods" and "forces of nature" were interchangeable with ancient philosophers as they are with modern man. They were placeholders meant to describe the ultimate forces of chaos and order that lay at the foundation of all reality.

Ananke, for example, was the personification of an ultimate deterministic force undergirding all of reality, something we might regard today as the "laws of nature". The philosophers didn't believe there was actually a giant woman holding up a spindle that directed the entire universe. Using the language of gods and goddesses was more a convenience, similar to how we talk about primordial forces today.

The Barbarian said:
So God says.
Gen. 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds.

I believe Him. You should, too.

I do believe him, and not just a few cherry-picked verses that may align with evolutionism.

And I'm a bit confused why you are quoting scripture at all. I thought you believed the Bible isn't describing how things actually came into existence? So you believe that Gen 1:24 is somewhat scientifically accurate but all the verses around it are way off the mark? How does that work?

The Barbarian said:
You're wrong about that. As we accumulate more and more evidence, it appears that God is right and the creationists are wrong. Would you like me to show you again?

Regardless of how well-supported you think it might be, it doesn't change the fact that within the scientific community, abiogenesis (life springing from non-life) has been a preformed conclusion in search of supporting evidence.

Why was abiogenesis already concluded before the existence of a well-supported theory? Because it follows a long held philosophical tradition that all things of the world sprang forth from some type of innate elemental strife within nature.

Gnosticism and the belief in Evolution

Regular Member

Crabby Old White Guy

Regular Member

Crabby Old White Guy

Regular Member

Crabby Old White Guy

Regular Member

Get my point, Web-Maker ???

Crabby Old White Guy

God Cannot Be Grasped, Except Through Love

God Cannot Be Grasped, Except Through Love

Regular Member

Regular Member

God Cannot Be Grasped, Except Through Love

Crabby Old White Guy

Crabby Old White Guy

Regular Member

Regular Member

Crabby Old White Guy

Regular Member

Similar threads