How do you reconcile Evolution and Genesis?

[Brother Billy]

Christians who accept Evolution usually assert that Genesis 1 and 2 were not meant to be taken literally. This post is aimed at you and I would like to know what does Original Sin actually mean to you and what were its consequences?

I think that the idea that there was a time when humans had no knowledge of good/evil or that they were incapable of raping, stealing or murdering is completely inconsistent with evolution. This is because human morality evolved with the human mind gradually over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.

Chimps have the ability to empathize with others and have a concept of fairness. These abilities would therefore have been present in both our most recent common ancestor who lived about 6 million years ago and early (pre-fall) humans. How can humans have rational thought, the ability to empathize with others and a concept of fairness, but not the ability to tell right from wrong or the ability to commit acts like murder or rape?

So if you believe that god used evolution, then humans were created with the capacity to recognize and engage in sin already in place i.e. humanity was created in a sinful state and Original Sin (or the Fall) is meaningless.

Of course if you believe that god intervened and suspended the natural laws when he created life, then anything is possible, and you would have no grounds for rejecting anything in the bible as impossible (including young earth creationism). You also couldn’t making any scientific claims about the history of life on earth because you couldn’t distinguish between what was natural law and what was a miracle.

 

[ewq1938]

How do you reconcile Evolution and Genesis?

Gevolutionesis.

 

[HTacianas]

Original sin is a propensity to sin, more or less the desire to sin. Everyone has it. We're born with it. Typically it is the result of obeying our animal nature instead of our human or godly nature.

The history of the earth is a pattern of life developing, then growing, expanding, and then being destroyed like a slate being wiped clean. Each time it made way for new life to form and expand until ultimately humankind appeared. Then around 10,000 years ago there was a dramatic change in human culture. Mankind went from hunter-gatherer to settlers and farmers. Along with that came the intellect leading the way for alphabets and advanced writing, mathematics, astronomy, etc.

I don't try to reconcile Genesis with Evolution. It would be impossible because I don't know everything. And if I claimed to know everything I would soon be proven wrong. Just like everybody else.

 

[Gene2memE]

When I was a Catholic, my understanding was the Genesis account was allegory.

The view that I was taught in my very Catholic secondary school was that Genesis was a collection of stories from various religious traditions, borrowed, re-written or coopted by the Semitic peoples of the Levant during their development of monotheism.

Evolution was simply a scientific fact. And was taught as such.

Those views persisted all the way into my very late 20s or early 30s, when I took a very hard look at some underpinning assumptions in my life and took a more skeptical stance, shedding a lot of beliefs in the process.

The closest I ever came to any overlap between Genesis and modern scientific thought during my education were a few discussions on cosmology led by one of my science teachers (a Catholic lay person who was employed with NASA's space programme in the 1980 [for which we all though he was SO cool]) who described God as setting the initial conditions which put the universe in motion.

Biblical literalism was nearly unheard of. And, when it was considered, it was from a position of scorn and amusement. Not just from students, but teachers as well. I think the vast, vast majority of us considered it some sort of ludicrous joke, like the Flat Earth society.

I'm from Australia, and when I went to the US in the very early 2000s to work as a teachers aide, I was absolutely shocked at the teachers lounge discussions about creationism/ID and evolution. This was at a private Christian school in the Pacific northwest, so not exactly the Bible belt.

 

[Gene2memE]

Original sin is a propensity to sin, more or less the desire to sin. Everyone has it. We're born with it. Typically it is the result of obeying our animal nature instead of our human or godly nature.

The history of the earth is a pattern of life developing, then growing, expanding, and then being destroyed like a slate being wiped clean. Each time it made way for new life to form and expand until ultimately humankind appeared. Then around 10,000 years ago there was a dramatic change in human culture. Mankind went from hunter-gatherer to settlers and farmers. Along with that came the intellect leading the way for alphabets and advanced writing, mathematics, astronomy, etc.

I don't try to reconcile Genesis with Evolution. It would be impossible because I don't know everything. And if I claimed to know everything I would soon be proven wrong. Just like everybody else.

I'd challenge you on the bolded part, in two areas.

First of all, the "dramatic shift" in culture - essentially the rise in sedentism due to the agricultural - occurred from about 14,000 years ago. Sounds like a quibble, but its not really. This is because of the end of the Pleistocene Epoch glaciation (about 12,000 years ago) and along with it a very rapid series of changes in climate which permitted people to settle in single locations for extended periods. Human sedentim straddles the end of the glaciation in lots of regions of the globe (as far apart as Europe and Papua New Guinea).

Secondly, the dramatic shift really isn't that dramatic, at least not outside the Fertile Cresecent. As paleontologists/anthropologist continue to investigate the history of humans, they are find all sorts of things that challenge that old idea that there was a particularly rapid onset developmental jump.

What are termed 'behaviourly modern' humans have been around for ~40,000 years. Horticulture has been around ~35,000 years. Sedentary farming has been around in a small scale for ~20,000 years and agriculture for better than 16,000.

Each development opens up options for more and more developments. Its an exponential tech curve, but its hard to find evidence of such incremental changes until humans started producing artifacts. That's why there's a "dramatic change".

 

[Presbyterian Continuist]

Christians who accept Evolution usually assert that Genesis 1 and 2 were not meant to be taken literally. This post is aimed at you and I would like to know what does Original Sin actually mean to you and what were its consequences?

I think that the idea that there was a time when humans had no knowledge of good/evil or that they were incapable of raping, stealing or murdering is inconsistent with evolution. This is because human morality evolved with the human mind gradually over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. So if you believe that god used evolution, then Original Sin could not have manifest as a sudden event in the natural world.

Of course if you believe that god intervened and suspended the natural laws, then anything is possible, and you would have no grounds for rejecting anything in the bible as impossible (including young earth creationism). You also couldn’t making any scientific claims about the history of life on earth because you couldn’t distinguish between what was natural law and what was a miracle.

If we know that there is a Living God out there who has communicated to mankind, then the Genesis account that He revealed to Moses has to be absolutely true historically and in its cosmology. It doesn't have to be exhaustive to be true. The Scripture says let God be true and every man a liar (by comparison).

Evolution is just a scientific theory. There has never been any substantive proof offered to verify it and make it a scientific law. Evolution says it might have happened, and it is probable that things happened that way. The Genesis account says it did happen, period.

Christians who know that the Living God is really there and is not silent, but has communicated to mankind through the written record revealed to Moses, have absolutely no doubt that the Genesis account is totally accurate and should be taken literally.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I
Evolution is just a scientific theory

"Just" a scientific theory?
No..... Rather: trimphantly a scientific theory.

Scientific theories are confirmed, demonstrable and verifiable bodies of knowledge that allow for practical application and development of technology.

Scientific theories, is the set of actual human knowledge about the world around us.

There has never been any substantive proof offered to verify it and make it a scientific law.

Scientific theories are never considered proven.
Scientific theories never become laws.

Scientific theories explain laws (and facts).
Laws are mostly just abstractions of sets of facts.
Facts and laws support theories.

Theories never become fact or law.
Theory is the "graduation stage" of a scientific hypothesis.

Evolution says it might have happened, and it is probable that things happened that way. The Genesis account says it did happen, period.

Evolution is supported by actual evidence and it is independently verifiable.
Genesis, is just a religious text filled with bare religious claims.

Christians who know that the Living God is really there and is not silent, but has communicated to mankind through the written record revealed to Moses, have absolutely no doubt that the Genesis account is totally accurate and should be taken literally.

Then those people are demonstrably wrong in their beliefs.

 

[Brother Billy]

If we know that there is a Living God out there who has communicated to mankind, then the Genesis account that He revealed to Moses has to be absolutely true historically and in its cosmology. It doesn't have to be exhaustive to be true. The Scripture says let God be true and every man a liar (by comparison).

Evolution is just a scientific theory. There has never been any substantive proof offered to verify it and make it a scientific law. Evolution says it might have happened, and it is probable that things happened that way. The Genesis account says it did happen, period.

Christians who know that the Living God is really there and is not silent, but has communicated to mankind through the written record revealed to Moses, have absolutely no doubt that the Genesis account is totally accurate and should be taken literally.

I suggest you watch the following:

 

[Norbert L]

One person sees something they can't fully explain and calls it unexplained phenomena, another person sees the same thing and calls it the supernatural. I don't reconcile science and the Bible.

Evolution is a scientific theory that has some merit but not beyond a reasonable doubt and Genesis involves a claim made by the God of Israel, a person can choose whether to believe it or not.

People can freely decide where to put their trust and confidence in. How someone decides to do that relies upon their level of understanding about the world that surrounds us.

 

[Job 33:6]

Ah, I'll let this one slide.

 

[AV1611VET]

Original sin is a propensity to sin, more or less the desire to sin.

We're not sinners because we sin; we sin because we're sinners.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

I suggest you watch the following:

Hurray for the Qualiasoup video! I wish he would put out some more videos. I always found his a bit more digestible than TheraminTrees', though I like both and he has shown up on those videos with his brother fairly recently.

 

[Silmarien]

Christians who accept Evolution usually assert that Genesis 1 and 2 were not meant to be taken literally. This post is aimed at you and I would like to know what does Original Sin actually mean to you and what were its consequences?

I think that the idea that there was a time when humans had no knowledge of good/evil or that they were incapable of raping, stealing or murdering is completely inconsistent with evolution. This is because human morality evolved with the human mind gradually over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. So if you believe that god used evolution, then Original Sin could not have manifest as a sudden event in the natural world.

I'm a Platonist with Christian sympathies rather than strictly speaking a Christian, but I think this is one of the most important theological questions out there. I tend to view the whole cosmos as in some sense fallen, and I think that a Free Processes response to the Problem of Evil can be used to account for this: if the universe had been complete and perfect at the moment of its creation, then it would not have been distinguishable from God. It needed a certain amount of freedom and flexibility to be able to create itself.

I think it's uncontroversial that there is a darker side to our evolutionary heritage (I would point primarily to tribalism and will to power in their various manifestations), which I would be comfortable identifying as original sin. I don't think there was a specific moment that it manifested itself in the natural world, but I do think that as our species became more self-conscious, we ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, so to speak, and began to recognize the imperfections in ourselves and our world.

I do believe that evolutionary theory requires significant reworking of Christian theology on the origins of evil, since the Fall of Man no longer works, but I actually think it makes Incarnational and Atonement theology all the more interesting, since if one believes in absolute goodness, there seems to be a wound in our universe itself of the sort that would require direct intervention and perhaps even divine participation to redeem all the resultant suffering.

Of course if you believe that god intervened and suspended the natural laws, then anything is possible, and you would have no grounds for rejecting anything in the bible as impossible (including young earth creationism). You also couldn’t making any scientific claims about the history of life on earth because you couldn’t distinguish between what was natural law and what was a miracle.

Of course Young Earth Creationism is a logical possibility, but that alone doesn't give me any reason to accept it as a historical reality. A miracle is generally defined as an extraordinary event that cannot be explained by the laws of nature, so I do not see what difficulty there would be in distinguishing between laws and miracles. At worst, the theist redefines laws of nature as regularities in nature (which is standard amongst atheists of the Humean persuasion), and continues to make empirical scientific claims concerning those regularities.

 

[HitchSlap]

When I was a Christian, I couldn't reconcile the two. It's one of the reasons I'm no longer a Christian.

 

[HitchSlap]

We're not sinners because we sin; we sin because we're sinners.

We're not Americans because we're born here. We're born here because we're Americans.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Christians who accept Evolution usually assert that Genesis 1 and 2 were not meant to be taken literally. This post is aimed at you and I would like to know what does Original Sin actually mean to you and what were its consequences?

I think that the idea that there was a time when humans had no knowledge of good/evil or that they were incapable of raping, stealing or murdering is completely inconsistent with evolution. This is because human morality evolved with the human mind gradually over hundreds of thousands or even millions of years. So if you believe that god used evolution, then Original Sin could not have manifest as a sudden event in the natural world.

Of course if you believe that god intervened and suspended the natural laws, then anything is possible, and you would have no grounds for rejecting anything in the bible as impossible (including young earth creationism). You also couldn’t making any scientific claims about the history of life on earth because you couldn’t distinguish between what was natural law and what was a miracle.

Conceptually, I can understand the pertinence of the idea of Original Sin in the thought of Irenaeus and in Augustine particularly, but I don't adhere to it, nor do I think it's necessary. And with Evolution as my working framework, I tend to handle Genesis 1 and 2 as a form of sacred Jewish polemic and revelation that tells us that humanity is separated from God because it, as a whole, can't seem to get on the same page with God.

So, God had to send Jesus.

And that's about it.

 

[Ophiolite]

I think it's uncontroversial that there is a darker side to our evolutionary heritage (I would point primarily to tribalism and will to power in their various manifestations),

In regard to tribalism I believe you have overlooked its duality.
Tribes may be hostile and are certainly suspicious of other tribes. This matches a popular view of evolution, epitomised by Herbert Spencer's "survival of the fittest" and Tennyson's "Nature, red in tooth and claw".
However, within the tribe there is extensive cooperation. I would argue that this cooperation is present at all levels at which evolution is expressed, from the biochemical building blocks to the concept of Gaia, and that it runs in parallel with the competitive element you speak of as "the darker side". Cooperation-Conflict: two sides of the same coin, intimately connected; one unable to exist or function without the other.

 

[Heissonear]

If we know that there is a Living God out there who has communicated to mankind, then the Genesis account that He revealed to Moses has to be absolutely true historically and in its cosmology. It doesn't have to be exhaustive to be true. The Scripture says let God be true and every man a liar (by comparison).

Evolution is just a scientific theory. There has never been any substantive proof offered to verify it and make it a scientific law. Evolution says it might have happened, and it is probable that things happened that way. The Genesis account says it did happen, period.

Christians who know that the Living God is really there and is not silent, but has communicated to mankind through the written record revealed to Moses, have absolutely no doubt that the Genesis account is totally accurate and should be taken literally.

Well stated oscarr. A God and Bible centered presentation.

The trouble has com from the godless (without God in this world, and in communication with Him). They are the ones who have set aside the Creator and Bible to by intellect try and find out what they see around them, and make naturalistic conclusions.

Men have exalted evolution, and promote it as the means to Explain the past on Earth. Byt their idol of evolution, as you state, has never been proven. The fossil record is one example of how no evidence has beed found of one Creature evolving into another creature.

 

[Heissonear]

"Just" a scientific theory?
No..... Rather: trimphantly a scientific theory.

Scientific theories are confirmed, demonstrable and verifiable bodies of knowledge that allow for practical application and development of technology.

Scientific theories, is the set of actual human knowledge about the world around us.



Scientific theories are never considered proven.
Scientific theories never become laws.

Scientific theories explain laws (and facts).
Laws are mostly just abstractions of sets of facts.
Facts and laws support theories.

Theories never become fact or law.
Theory is the "graduation stage" of a scientific hypothesis.



Evolution is supported by actual evidence and it is independently verifiable.
Genesis, is just a religious text filled with bare religious claims.



Then those people are demonstrably wrong in their beliefs.

Incorrect. Evolution is shown to be based on conjecture based on the fossil record.

Again, the fossil record does not show one Kind of Creature evolving into another creature over time. All we see are fossils and gaps between them.

I still have tge pictures of your erroneous claim flippers from feet. Do we need to show the error therein again, when the appendages are placed bak on the Creatures they are from? More than appendages had to morphologically change by such prossess stated as evolution. And there are no fossils between such macro-assemblages to connect the dots by.

Your post claims "evidence for evolution" but such is conjecture based. Evolution requires belief to accept. And you believe in evolution. One who has set a Creator to the side as a possibility to explain what we wee see around us.

 

[Silmarien]

In regard to tribalism I believe you have overlooked its duality.
Tribes may be hostile and are certainly suspicious of other tribes. This matches a popular view of evolution, epitomised by Herbert Spencer's "survival of the fittest" and Tennyson's "Nature, red in tooth and claw".
However, within the tribe there is extensive cooperation. I would argue that this cooperation is present at all levels at which evolution is expressed, from the biochemical building blocks to the concept of Gaia, and that it runs in parallel with the competitive element you speak of as "the darker side". Cooperation-Conflict: two sides of the same coin, intimately connected; one unable to exist or function without the other.

No, I'm aware of the role that cooperation plays in evolution. With the word "tribalism," I'm referring specifically to our tendency to divide the world into Us and Them, to abandon our own integrity to please the group, and other negative behavioral patterns that go hand in hand with being a social species. My intent was to situate the concept of original sin within an evolutionary framework, not to paint evolution in general as solely a matter of survival of the fittest.

That said, once upon a time, we could have said that the cosmos was once in perfect harmony, and then the Fall of Man occurred and all of nature was corrupted, leading to a world where conflict is a factor as well. This is obviously the traditional Christian picture, but if one accepts evolution, it no longer works. And that is a serious challenge to the coherency of Christian theology.

Christians (and any theist who believes that there is a genuinely dark side to human nature) also cannot write off the connection between cooperation and conflict as simply two sides of the same coin. The fact that they are parallel manifestations means that something has gone wrong at the cosmic level, not merely at the human one. Christianity in particular with its promise of a renewed cosmos and fairly radical picture of cooperation is shrieking out to the four winds that this should not be.

Which I think is a serious theological concern for the theistic evolutionist. If cooperation and conflict are merely two sides of the same coin, then Christianity is false. I see no way around that, so Christians who accept evolution need to have an answer to precisely this problem. (And there are answers out there, but I can count on one hand the number of Christian theologians who specifically engage with this question. That's a problem.)