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Does equating evolution with atheism prevent creationists from understanding God's Creation?

Subduction Zone

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The now known to be fake Haeckel drawings were also in our textbooks.
Please be specific. How were Haeckel's drawings "fake"? Tell me which ones and which editions too. You are buying a pig in a poke when you make this claim. I know what Haeckel did wrong and why. I doubt if you know. You would not have used the words "fake" if you did.
 
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Speedwell

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I refuse to wear any label other than Christian. If someone can work out what label to put on me from what I say, they are welcome. I just won't wear it.
You don't have to have to wear a label. What you have to to is to stop being hostile to Christians whose theology differs from yours on inessential matters, like a dispensational view of scripture, for example, or the insistence literal inerrancy which goes along with it.
 
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dlamberth

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Please know that I'm not trying to be hostile to Christians when I say that I've grown to the place where I consider the literal inerrancy of the Biblical creation story as a lie. It's gotten that black and white for me. I know that the Biblical creation story is based on theology. But when the facts that the earth itself is showing us and is staring us in the face and we deny what our own eyes are showing us, in my mind the denial of those facts becomes a lie. I'm sorry I'm being so straight forward here. I'm not trying to bash Christianity. The Biblical creation story has nothing to do with one's Salvation. Many of my spiritual heroes are Christian. I'm at present doing a deep dive into the Beguines who were a Christian monastic Medieval women movement created by women and for women and not affiliated with or supervised by a male order. I truly believe that I'm not alone in this feeling this way. But I also feel that the insistence of literal inerrancy of the Biblical creation story has had a major negative impact on the Christian religion.
 
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stevil

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Well, either:
1. God created all life forms fully formed, and is continuing to do so as species become extinct and new species appear, but does it in a way that gives the appearance that species evolve from other species, giving a trail of genetic similarities and markers and following a geospacial proximity path, in order to fool scientists into thinking evolution is true.
2. Evolution is true but god guides it, because god has a plan for certain species to have specific forms.
3. Evolution is true and ever continuing, there is no plan for specific forms, forms match environments based on which forms are more successful and more likely to survive and procreate. No guidance necessary.
 
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Speedwell

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2.5. Could an omniscient creator not have known that in the environment he created an intelligent self-aware creature suitable to His purposes would eventually emerge--without intermediate tinkering.
 
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dlamberth

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3. Evolution is true and ever continuing, there is no plan for specific forms, forms match environments based on which forms are more successful and more likely to survive and procreate. No guidance necessary.
The only requirement is a creative universe.
 
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Smokie

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Are you claiming that Christians understand Gods creation? Because no one does, no matter the persons beliefs
 
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Astrophile

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Interesting. I didn't know that there were entirely secular schools in England during the 1950s. I thought that it was laid down in the Education Act of 1944 that religious education was a compulsory subject in all schools in the United Kingdom. By the way, which is the oldest continuously operating school in England?

Haeckel was not above taking extremely creative licence. He used the same woodcut 3 times to "prove" that embryos were the same in the early stages. I know some Creationists are not squeaky clean in that area either.

Regardless of Haeckel's creative licence, I can only repeat that the biology books that I read during the 1950s and 1960s were dismissive of his ideas of recapitulation and ontogeny repeating phylogeny. I suppose that biologists found Haeckel's embryological evidence unconvincing.
 
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Subduction Zone

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Haeckel was not above taking extremely creative licence. He used the same woodcut 3 times to "prove" that embryos were the same in the early stages. I know some Creationists are not squeaky clean in that area either.
Not quite true. Haeckel was pressed to meet a deadline. He did not have time to prepare the illustrations needed before his article was to be published. He did use the same woodcut 3 times. It was not to "prove". Please do not use that term. It was to be used as evidence. At that stage the differences were very minor and he did not think that it mattered that much. The oversight was fixed in later editions. I could find articles explaining this if you need me to. Creationists dishonestly reported what Haeckel's error was (and it was an error in judgment, nothing more). There was no attempt to deceive.
 
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BobRyan

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In a scenario where God did in fact use evolutionary processes as a means to diversify life on Earth, would dismissing that process on the grounds of being an atheistic idea inherently prevent creationists from acknowledging the truth

indeed - but wouldn't that be a circular argument where the salient point is assumed at the start?
 
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pitabread

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indeed - but wouldn't that be a circular argument where the salient point is assumed at the start?

No, because evolution isn't an assumption; it's a conclusion based on observations of biological populations.
 
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BobRyan

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No, because evolution isn't an assumption; it's a conclusion based on observations of biological populations.

In your OP did you not present a scenario where you proposed that as the starting assumption?
 
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Ponderous Curmudgeon

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In your OP did you not present a scenario where you proposed that as the starting assumption?
It is called a hypothetical where a point is agreed for the sake of argument without any necessary agreement that the point is true. In this case the hypothetical point was that God had used evolution.
 
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pitabread

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In your OP did you not present a scenario where you proposed that as the starting assumption?

The assumption in the context of the OP was that God had used evolution as a means of diversifying life on this planet. However, evolution itself is not an assumption, but rather a conclusion derived from observations in biology.

You can interpret that how you will.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Ontogeny does recapitulate embryological phylogeny, to a limited extent, but it's not a reliable guide.
 
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BobRyan

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The assumption in the context of the OP was that God had used evolution as a means of diversifying life on this planet. .

true - that was the proposed assumption in the OP
 
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BobRyan

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It is called a hypothetical where a point is agreed for the sake of argument .

True and in the proposed OP scenario we have the circular argument that if we assume A is true - would not rejection "of A" be rejecting what is true, wouldn't it be a rejection of what is true?
 
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Ponderous Curmudgeon

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True and in the proposed OP scenario we have the circular argument that if we assume A is true - would not rejection "of A" be rejecting what is true, wouldn't it be a rejection of what is true?
No it would be the beginning of a discussion to see where this hypothetical leads. In formal logic you often start in this way and if in the end it leads to a contradiction, you have just proven that your hypothesis was not true.
 
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