Creationist AND an Evolutionist?

[Assyrian]

I have a few questions on this subject,

Does the bible say anything about evolution?

Does is evolution, evolution if God is included into the theory.

Is the "evidence" that bacteria become "immune" to pesticides through mutation, a valid arguement for evolution?

I know in the Bible it says that God made the earth and all the creatures on it... so couldn't he just make new species of animals if he wanted to? Instead of making them go through evolution? Because nothing can happen outside of God's will. So, is there a definite answer?

And what's the point/reason/necessity of knowing where and how species of organisms came to be?

The bible does not teach evolution. Then again it does not teach any of our modern sciences.

I would say however that evolution, at least the TE version anyway, is a much better fit to the Genesis account than the Atheist or Creationist views. Well the first part looks obvious, duh. Of course atheism disagrees with the Genesis account. But the interesting thing is how Atheism and Creationism both contradict Genesis in very similar ways:

Genesis 1:24 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds--livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so.
25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

In the first verse God command the earth to produce living creatures. The second verse says God made them. Atheist obviously deny that bit, but they do agree with the first part in so far as it say it was natural processes, the earth, that produced all the different species.

That is the bit that creationists deny. It was all God. God created all the animals. The earth with its natural processes did nothing. They empty the first verse of any meaning. Only TEs bring both verses together and say, yes, all the different species arose by natural processes on this planet - but it was God's plan and purpose. God created them and evolution tells us how.

 

[jeff992]

I'm curious if could anyone be a creationist and an evolutionist?

What if someone believed that God made everything, but gave his creatures the ability to change and adapt, because God can do anything he pleases, becasue he's God. Would that person be a creationist or evolutionist or both?

What do you think?

Someone has probably said all this...

Yes, because evolution only talks of changes within existing being, not abiogenisis (the creation of living things) and it does not answer how matter and energy got here how it is in the first place.

 

[AuhRinYaang]

Thanks everyone for all your answers!


So God made the earth according to the bible but doesn't say anything about evolution, so there's a possiblity that God could have created the earth through evolution; through combining all the substances that were on the earth at that time. right?

But it says God did all this in a week, but evolution(what my school teaches) says it was done over many billion/millions of years. So how was that(time) measured?

 

[gluadys]

Thanks everyone for all your answers!


So God made the earth according to the bible but doesn't say anything about evolution, so there's a possiblity that God could have created the earth through evolution; through combining all the substances that were on the earth at that time. right?

But it says God did all this in a week, but evolution(what my school teaches) says it was done over many billion/millions of years. So how was that(time) measured?

Depends on what you are measuring.

The distance of stars is measured in light-years, i.e. the distance covered by light as it travels for a year.

Some stars are billions of light-years away from us. Since it took light a year to travel each of those light-years, that means we are seeing today light that started out from those stars billions of years ago and is just now arriving where we can see it. So (even if it is not there now) that star was shining billions of years ago, in order for us to see it today.

Igneous rocks can be measured through radioactive decay. There are a number of different measurements depending on which radioactive mineral is used as a base. What is important here is that radioactive decay is a very constant process and nothing we know of on earth destabilizes it. It just keeps going and going and going at a constant pace, so it is a very reliable time-keeper. And there are also a number of safe-guard tests to help detect errors in handling the rock samples and contamination which can lead to wrong readings.

A less reliable measure, but suitable for initial estimates, is stratigraphic dating, which is used in geology. By identifying the geologic stratum a rock is from, you have at least a relative notion that it is older than another stratum and younger than a different one. So you can set the various strata in order of age, even if you can't directly tell how old each one is.

Connected with this are index fossils, for it was discovered back in the 19th century that certain fossils are found only in certain strata, so if you find one of these fossils, you know what stratum it is from. But again, this is a rough measure suitable for initial estimates. More accurate tests are used for absolute dating.

A newer measurement depends on average rates of mutation. From this one can estimate how long ago the common ancestor of two populations was alive.

All scientific measures, whether of the age of the universe or the age of the earth or the age of humanity go back much further than 6,000 years.

But this only means a literal interpretation of the Genesis six days cannot hold. And there is no particular reason why it should. Christians had reasons to choose non-literal intepretations of the creation accounts long before they became questionable on scientific grounds.

 

[Assyrian]

Thanks everyone for all your answers!


So God made the earth according to the bible but doesn't say anything about evolution, so there's a possiblity that God could have created the earth through evolution; through combining all the substances that were on the earth at that time. right?

But it says God did all this in a week, but evolution(what my school teaches) says it was done over many billion/millions of years. So how was that(time) measured?

Who better to answer this than Moses himself. Read his take on God's days in the psalm he wrote about the creation, Psalm 90.