EO & evolution

[Dorothea]

the dinosaurs did not go extinct before Adam and Eve sinned, and there was no time for them to have done so anyways!

there wasn't necessarily two of every type of dinosaur on the ark - it could simply have been 2 dinosaurs - we aren't given that much detail.

the Fathers teach that Noah and his family lived peacefully on the ark with such dangerous animals because of Noah's holiness. He was a prepopodbnyy - that type of Saint like St. Seraphim - he was according to the image of Adam, and animals were peaceful in his presence. we see this with people like Elder Paisios as well.

Ah, I see. Thanks!

 

[Dorothea]

i've heard some even say that GOD planted fossils to test our faith. i don't know why this proposition is more acceptable to them than evolution.

A couple months ago, I heard of a Christian non-denom man who believes dinos never existed. I'd never heard of anybody believing that before.

 

[jckstraw72]

Ah, I see. Thanks!

and here's at least one of those quotes about animals being outside the Garden:

St John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 2.11:
Its site is higher in the East than all the earth: it is temperate and the air that surrounds it is the rarest and purest: evergreen plants are its pride, sweet fragrances abound, it is flooded with light, and in sensuous freshness and beauty it transcends imagination: in truth the place is divine, a meet home for him who was created in God’s image: no creature lacking reason made its dwelling there but man alone, the work of God’s own hands.

 

[truefiction1]

deleted.

 

[rusmeister]

Simply add up all the years in the genealogy of Adam, and voila. There is a more precise number, but 7000 is easier to type If we are going to take the historically literal exegesis of Genesis seriously, then we must date the fall to about 7000 years ago, no?

Sure, that's plausible. I can even believe it. But it seems you think that I believe in those sorts of calculations. I don't, actually. Like I said, ANY variable in a calculation that I miss, and lo and behold, my calculation is wrong! So I do not dogmatically insist on such literalism, which is entirely consistent with my rejection of evolutionist calculations. I'm not the rabid YEC literal-interpretation-of-everything fanatic you guys have taken me for. I say that there is a vital mutual exclusivity between the idea of a Fall from an ideal state, causing death, and evolution, infinite change from we-know-not-what to we-know-not-what, of which death is an inseparable factor. That both of those ideas directly deny the other and cannot coexist or be made compatible. I can accept any idea that doesn't involve mutual exclusivity, that could be made consistent with our Tradition. I am quite convinced that this one cannot, though.

 

[Dorothea]

and here's at least one of those quotes about animals being outside the Garden:

St John of Damascus, Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 2.11:
Its site is higher in the East than all the earth: it is temperate and the air that surrounds it is the rarest and purest: evergreen plants are its pride, sweet fragrances abound, it is flooded with light, and in sensuous freshness and beauty it transcends imagination: in truth the place is divine, a meet home for him who was created in God’s image: no creature lacking reason made its dwelling there but man alone, the work of God’s own hands.

Forgive my reading comprehension problems. I want to make sure I'm getting this. St. John is describing Paradise/Garden of Eden, and he is saying only man lived in the garden? No animals?

 

[jckstraw72]

Forgive my reading comprehension problems. I want to make sure I'm getting this. St. John is describing Paradise/Garden of Eden, and he is saying only man lived in the garden? No animals?

yes, you are correct.

 

[ArmyMatt]

Is that really more far-fetched than saying that God did it?

If nothing died until after the fall, then we should not find anything that died more than 7000 years ago. All fossils should be in shallow surface layers of sediment. This is obviously not the case, so how did they get where they are? God or Satan - take your pick...is there any other explanation?

unless another radical change like the Flood would have shifted the sediment of the earth. if I go hiking in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, some rock breaks loose, covers me and I die, and I am found 100 years later, you have 131 year old me in rock that is, according to our dating techniques, millions of years old. just because I am in an older layer of the dirt does not mean that I am that old.

 

[rusmeister]

yes, you are correct.

Well, it's obvious to me that from the passages in Scripture, Adam had to have SOME kind of interaction with animals before the Fall, if only to name them - though I think also to appreciate them. So "living" can be interpreted differently. For example, I officially live at one address, but in practice spend most of my time ("live") at my family's address. So I don't place much dogmatic importance on most details like that, even if St John of Damascus DID say it.

I favor agnosticism, leaning towards whatever we find general agreement among the fathers. Any lone quote COULD be wild speculation, off-the-mark. Scripture has primacy; most actions described in Scripture as happening should be taken at face value, except where the Church has clearly determined otherwise. It is obvious that Jesus didn't mean we should forgive someone only 490 times.

 

[jckstraw72]

Well, it's obvious to me that from the passages in Scripture, Adam had to have SOME kind of interaction with animals before the Fall, if only to name them - though I think also to appreciate them. So "living" can be interpreted differently. For example, I officially live at one address, but in practice spend most of my time ("live") at my family's address. So I don't place much dogmatic importance on most details like that, even if St John of Damascus DID say it.

I favor agnosticism, leaning towards whatever we find general agreement among the fathers. Any lone quote COULD be wild speculation, off-the-mark. Scripture has primacy; most actions described in Scripture as happening should be taken at face value, except where the Church has clearly determined otherwise. It is obvious that Jesus didn't mean we should forgive someone only 490 times.

St. John talks about how the animals were brought into to the Garden to him to be named ... but yes, i don't find this to be the most important detail ... but a few pages back Dorothea had asked a question about whether dinosaurs lived in the Garden or not.

 

[Dorothea]

unless another radical change like the Flood would have shifted the sediment of the earth. if I go hiking in the bottom of the Grand Canyon, some rock breaks loose, covers me and I die, and I am found 100 years later, you have 131 year old me in rock that is, according to our dating techniques, millions of years old. just because I am in an older layer of the dirt does not mean that I am that old.

Huh...I'd never thought about that before. Fascinating....

 

[Dorothea]

yes, you are correct.

Ok, thanks.

 

[Dorothea]

yes, you are correct.

I just asked my husband about no animals in the Garden and Rus's mention of Adam naming the animals. He said only man entered the Garden (of Eden). The rest of creation were in Eden, just not the Garden (center). The center of the Garden is where man was - the special place because the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil existed there. It was like a sacred place. There were mysteries there. So outside of Eden was the desert/wilderness. - That's what he said to me a few minutes ago. Fascinating.

 

[GregConstantine]

from Fr Lawrence on the OCA home page:

Evolution or Creation Science? - Orthodox Church in America

some quotes from the article:

"Church does not call us to take part in this arm-wrestling match. The creation stories in Genesis were not written, I suggest, to give us a blow-by-blow account of how we got here. Rather, they were written to reveal something fundamental about the God of Israel and the privileged status of the people who worshipped Him. We assume today that the ancients wanted to know how we got here, and how we were created. In fact, they were mostly uninterested in such cosmic questions, and the creation myths that existed in the ancient near east spoke to other issues. Most people back then, if they thought of the question of cosmic origins at all, assumed that the world had always existed, and the various gods they worshipped were simply part of that eternal backdrop. That is where the creation stories were truly revolutionary. Their main point was not merely that God created the world; it was that the tribal God of the Jewish people was sovereign over the world."


"The stories of Genesis cannot be read apart from their original cultural context, and when we read them as they were meant to be read, we see that the creation story was a gauntlet thrown down before the prevailing culture of its time. The creation stories affirmed that the Jewish God, the tribal deity of a small and internationally unimportant people, alone made the whole cosmos. That meant that He was able to protect His People. It meant that, properly speaking, all the pagan nations should abandon their old gods and worship Him. These stories affirm that the Jewish God is powerful enough to have created everything by a few simple orders. They affirm that Man is not the mere tool and slave of the gods, whose job it is to feed the deities and care for their temples. Rather, Man is a co-ruler with God, His own image and viceroy on earth. And Woman is not a thing to be sold, inferior to Man. Rather, she shares Man’s calling and dignity.
These are the real lessons of Genesis. It has nothing to say, for or against, the theory of evolution. Its true lessons are located elsewhere."

 

[ArmyMatt]

yes, there are many priests out there that share this viewpoint. where are some saints and those that we know were highly illumined that do?

 

[GregConstantine]

really, not many, because with the exception of those saints whose time on earth came after Darwin, none of them wrote about evolution for the simple fact that at their time, it did not exist

it's easy to take the boy out of the country, but it's hard to take the country out of the boy.

 

[rusmeister]

really, not many, because with the exception of those saints whose time on earth came after Darwin, none of them wrote about evolution for the simple fact that at their time, it did not exist

it's easy to take the boy out of the country, but it's hard to take the country out of the boy.

Quite right.
Only I think evolution STILL doesn't exist (again, as a truth of cosmic theory, rather than observed change).

 

[rusmeister]

from Fr Lawrence on the OCA home page:

Evolution or Creation Science? - Orthodox Church in America

some quotes from the article:

"Church does not call us to take part in this arm-wrestling match. The creation stories in Genesis were not written, I suggest, to give us a blow-by-blow account of how we got here. Rather, they were written to reveal something fundamental about the God of Israel and the privileged status of the people who worshipped Him. We assume today that the ancients wanted to know how we got here, and how we were created. In fact, they were mostly uninterested in such cosmic questions, and the creation myths that existed in the ancient near east spoke to other issues. Most people back then, if they thought of the question of cosmic origins at all, assumed that the world had always existed, and the various gods they worshipped were simply part of that eternal backdrop. That is where the creation stories were truly revolutionary. Their main point was not merely that God created the world; it was that the tribal God of the Jewish people was sovereign over the world."


"The stories of Genesis cannot be read apart from their original cultural context, and when we read them as they were meant to be read, we see that the creation story was a gauntlet thrown down before the prevailing culture of its time. The creation stories affirmed that the Jewish God, the tribal deity of a small and internationally unimportant people, alone made the whole cosmos. That meant that He was able to protect His People. It meant that, properly speaking, all the pagan nations should abandon their old gods and worship Him. These stories affirm that the Jewish God is powerful enough to have created everything by a few simple orders. They affirm that Man is not the mere tool and slave of the gods, whose job it is to feed the deities and care for their temples. Rather, Man is a co-ruler with God, His own image and viceroy on earth. And Woman is not a thing to be sold, inferior to Man. Rather, she shares Man’s calling and dignity.
These are the real lessons of Genesis. It has nothing to say, for or against, the theory of evolution. Its true lessons are located elsewhere."

Yes, I've already seen this on FB. And responded to it there. It is true that Genesis does not directly speak against evolution. The conclusions I have come to must be inferred from doctrines we find in Holy Tradition, including Genesis.

The hierarchs of our time don't know better than we. They ARE us, and are muddling through this, and don't know how to respond. They, too, have been raised with a reverence for science and are loathe to admit that a widespread teaching could be wrong. It IS much easier to call for compromise and an acceptance of all viewpoints. But as long as the Fall logically excludes and contradicts the idea that the beings that Fell were also evolving, and that death logically would have to have been in the world at all points of the development of Creation, thus making it impossible for it to have been introduced by an already "evolved" man to introduce it by sin, I see no way that the idea of evolution can be made compatible with our Faith. There IS a genuine dichotomy that cannot be dismissed with our beloved "Both...and..." approach.

 

[Protoevangel]

Then the Lord came down in the pillar of cloud and stood in the door of the tabernacle, and called Aaron and Miriam. And they both went forward. Then He said,

“Hear now My words:
If there is a prophet among you,
I, the Lord, make Myself known to him in a vision;
I speak to him in a dream.
Not so with My servant Moses;
He is faithful in all My house.
I speak with him face to face,
Even plainly, and not in dark sayings;
And he sees the form of the Lord.
Why then were you not afraid
To speak against My servant Moses?”​

- Numbers 12: 5-8​

Considering this, as a quote from GOD HIMSELF, I think we should pause before we try to explain away the words in the books of Moses, and replace them with the words of the modern intelligentsia...

Is it hard to accept? Yes. I will be the first to admit that. At first, it feels like denying reality itself. Truthfully though, it is letting go of the greatest illusion Satan has perpetrated on mankind... that we can really figure this out on our own. IF there really was a Fall, as described in Holy Scripture, then it only makes sense that purely materialistic investigation would be vain and useless. But considering the results of the demographics from the other thread (currently 78% call themselves Orthodox, but only 34% believe in the Fall as presented in Holy Scripture), I have very little hope that many here will even care... I grieve for modern American "Orthodoxy". I really do.

Lord have mercy on us all.

 

[~Anastasia~]

I won't propose dogmatic answers. I was trained in evolutionary science, and simply I saw some problems in the way it was delivered to me. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, perhaps with modifications on what I was taught. But it does mean that I myself don't see evolution as an infallible theory.

I too am most concerned with the idea of the introduction of death. Does the fact that "death entered through one man" mean that the animals also did not die before the fall? If so, then evolution is not compatible with a literal reading of Scripture. If not, then perhaps it still can be.

I don't have a pet theory. I believe God created everything. How He did it, might have been a simple or a complex process. Maybe literally in 6 days just as Genesis recounts. I'm certainly ok with that. I'm also ok that maybe He used evolution or some other process. Perhaps Adam was a selected individual who reached a stage of humanity, was removed by God who breathed a spirit into him. That could even still necessitate Eve being taken literally from his side. I don't know.

I do tend to think the rock we are standing on is older than some 7-8000 years. The account of creation obviously does not tell us everything. When did God create the angels? It doesn't say. When did Satan rebel? It doesn't say. So other things happened, but are not mentioned. I'm ok with that too.

I'm certainly interested in what the Church teaches, but I haven't gotten around to that yet.