How do you reconcile Evolution and Genesis?

[2PhiloVoid]

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.)

Great opening for a discussion, Silmarien!

Ok. Christianity, Theistic Evolution, and Social Philosophy. Oh my! Where do we start? I'm just going to take this more piece-meal and existentially because the way I handle this isn't in some kind of lock-step, analytical, systematic fashion. And being that my understanding of biblical epistemology kind of leaves us out in the Oort Cloud, so to speak, in our attempt to grasp just how God intended for us to think about all of this, I'm not going to jump in here and say, "Eureka! I've got ten answers, and I'll sell each one for 1000 euros ..."! Although, that would probably be cheap if I really did have real, bona-fide answers for these things, ay? )

I think you're right to recognize that Christianity does generally promise a renewed cosmos, and for my part, I don't think the average Christian Theistic Evolutionist will dispute this, if his Christianity is worth the salt in his breath. But as to what it all 'means' and 'to how' it is supposed to pan out might depend on whether you ask someone more evangelically leaning like myself or Francis Collins, versus someone like Alfred North Whitehead, Teilhard de Chardin, or Karl Heim. But this part you already know.

Let's take things in small portions here, first. I'm looking at your if-then statement "If cooperation and conflict are merely two sides of the same coin, then Christianity is false." Well, can we say that cooperation and conflict are "merely" two sides of the same coin? I'm not sure they ever really are. Is the essence of conflict here in your statement ambiguous or vague in anyway? Is there more than one kind of conflict in the Bible [and/or in our world], let alone more than one kind of cooperation? I think we'd have to be able to answer these questions first before worrying too much about how well the more Christian Theistic Evolutionist will or can answer your initial step of inquiry.

So, if you want a precise answer, I'm thinking we need to ask a bevy of precise questions along the way. [And no, I'm not trying to give Socrates a bit of shameless advertising; if I did that then someone like Matthew Lee Anderson might smack me on the head, if he were actually mean enough to do so.]

 

[Silmarien]

Let's take things in small portions here, first. I'm looking at your if-then statement "If cooperation and conflict are merely two sides of the same coin, then Christianity is false." Well, can we say that cooperation and conflict are "merely" two sides of the same coin? I'm not sure they ever really are. Is the essence of conflict here in your statement ambiguous or vague in anyway? Is there more than one kind of conflict in the Bible [and/or in our world], let alone more than one kind of cooperation? I think we'd have to be able to answer these questions first before worrying too much about how well the more Christian Theistic Evolutionist will or can answer your initial step of inquiry.

I think we need to start with theistic evolution, because evolutionary theory has revolutionized the way that we think about social behavior in general, and cooperation and conflict in specific. Can the traditional understanding of these ideas stand up at all, or must we resign ourselves to viewing them in morally neutral terms? (As I would assume @Ophiolite is doing.)

When I think of conflict in biblical terms, I think of two things in particular:

Isaiah 11:6. "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." This seems like a clear indication that the situation in the natural world is less than ideal, and since it did not come about as a result of Adam's rebellion, why is it the natural order of things? Perhaps I stress this more than most do, but I side with Ivan Karamazov: if all the world's long suffering is not redeemed, then Christianity's promise of reconciliation is cheap indeed.

In the New Testament, I'm specifically thinking about passages such as Matthew 5:43-48. Perfection is associated with loving all, and not simply with loving those in your in group. If cooperation is merely another tool to aid the individual or group's flourishing, and conflict an equally legitimate aspect of that tool, then the Christian image in particular is in trouble. The Christian picture of morality is a chimera, since it places on a pedestal an all-encompassing conception of empathy that is at odds with reality as it actually is. This is not devastating, since Christianity also claims that the powers of sin, death, and the devil have laid siege to this world, but what does this really mean in a post-Darwinian world?

(I'm going to summon @zippy2006, since I know he's been interested in having this discussion too.)

 

[Brother Billy]

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.

How is that different from superstition?

 

[Brother Billy]

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.

That video is the best introductory video on evolution that I've discovered so far

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I think we need to start with theistic evolution, because evolutionary theory has revolutionized the way that we think about social behavior in general, and cooperation and conflict in specific. Can the traditional understanding of these ideas stand up at all, or must we resign ourselves to viewing them in morally neutral terms? (As I would assume @Ophiolite is doing.)

When I think of conflict in biblical terms, I think of two things in particular:

Isaiah 11:6. "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." This seems like a clear indication that the situation in the natural world is less than ideal, and since it did not come about as a result of Adam's rebellion, why is it the natural order of things? Perhaps I stress this more than most do, but I side with Ivan Karamazov: if all the world's long suffering is not redeemed, then Christianity's promise of reconciliation is cheap indeed.

In the New Testament, I'm specifically thinking about passages such as Matthew 5:43-48. Perfection is associated with loving all, and not simply with loving those in your in group. If cooperation is merely another tool to aid the individual or group's flourishing, and conflict an equally legitimate aspect of that tool, then the Christian image in particular is in trouble. The Christian picture of morality is a chimera, since it places on a pedestal an all-encompassing conception of empathy that is at odds with reality as it actually is. This is not devastating, since Christianity also claims that the powers of sin, death, and the devil have laid siege to this world, but what does this really mean in a post-Darwinian world?

(I'm going to summon @zippy2006, since I know he's been interested in having this discussion too.)

How do you figure it did not come about because of Adam's rebellion?

Genesis 6:12 "God looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way upon the earth."


Now ask yourself.... What is meant by corrupt? If it was sin, then what did God change so that God could promise to not do so again? Sin still exists.

Could the corruption be because the edict of Kind after Kind had been broken? That the traces of foreign DNA you think leads to ancestry was brought about by this corruption? And the solution was to make it so only Kind could breed with Kind so this could not happen again and so God could make that promise????

 

[Silmarien]

How do you figure it did not come about because of Adam's rebellion?

Because I'm not a Creationist. If you can reconcile Adam's rebellion with a reasonably orthodox understanding of evolutionary theory, I'd be happy to hear you out, but this thread was quite explicitly aimed at theistic evolutionists, not Creationists.

 

[Brother Billy]

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.

That's an interesting perspective. However the evolution of "tribalism" stretches back millions of years. Such behavior can be seen in Chimpanzees. See:

If you identify Tribalism as original sin, then you would also have to apply it to Chimpanzees as well. The other implication of the above is that humanity is not responsible for their sinful nature since God created us with such a nature already within us.

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.

I think our conscience is an evolutionary adaptation in response to the our environment. Our ancestors lived in small groups in very hostile environments where starvation, the elements and wild animals/enemy groups were constant dangers. These conditions selected for prosocial behavior (i.e. co-operation, not cheating and caring for others in your own group) since this behavior would have provided a survival advantage. At the same time anti-social behavior (e.g. stealing from and randomly killing others in your group) would have resulted in a survival disadvantage.

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.

Assume a scientist was investigating the motion of the planets and one day he observed something which didn't fit the current scientific model (e.g. maybe the speed at which the planet orbiting the sun suddenly accelerated and then decelerated again). How would he tell the difference between:
- the anomaly was a miracle and his model is right
- there was no miracle and there is a problem with the model

 

[hedrick]

Gen 1 and 2 aren’t really allegories. When people say that, I suspect they mean that it’s a story isn’t literally true, but demonstrates spiritual truths. Not all such stories are allegories. E.g. Jesus’ parables generally aren’t.

Did the final editor of Genesis think the creation stories were literally true, and if not, why include them? To readers today it’s obvious that there are two stories with different chronologies, and thus both can’t be true. (Spare me the weird exegesis trying to claim that this isn’t true. With that kind of exegesis you can prove anything.) Would someone operating in the ancient world have viewed things that way? I don’t claim to know. I believe the primary commitment of the final editor of Genesis (and other books) was to preserve the major traditions of Israel. When there were two, he used them both.

He didn’t do that just for the fun of it. In much of the OT you can see a clear message about the relationship between Israel and God. Obviously the editor believed that God is the creator, and we’re his children, both good (Gen 1) and sinful (Gen 2). But much of the later theology of the Fall seems missing from the OT. I doubt that the editor placed the kind of weight on the specifics of the stories that modern Christians often do. Whether he had a sufficient critical mindset to judge the historical accuracy of the stores is anyone’s guess.

 

[Silmarien]

If you identify Tribalism as original sin, then you would also have to apply it to Chimpanzees as well. The other implication of the above is that humanity is not responsible for their sinful nature since God created us with such a nature already within us.

Well, yes. I find higher animals like dolphins and other apes fascinating specifically because we do see such strong precursors to human altruism and cruelty there. Since these species appear to still be pre-rational, however, I don't think they can be considered morally responsible for these behaviors. If they ever become fully rational, then I expect that they too will suffer from a sort of original sin.

I don't think that humanity is responsible for its sinful nature, only the results. I should probably specify that I draw from Orthodox rather than Western theology concerning sin, which means both that I view original sin more as an inclination towards sin rather than a hereditary curse in the Augustinian sense, and that it's more along the lines of a spiritual illness that requires healing rather than a crime that demands punishment or pardon.

I think our conscience is an evolutionary adaptation in response to the our environment. Our ancestors lived in small groups in very hostile environments. Prosocial behavior (i.e. co-operation and caring for others in your own group) was selected for since this is what gave a survival advantage.

I agree in part, but evolutionary psychology only gets you so far, because both our moral intuitions and our darker impulses can be considered evolutionary adaptations. I think rationality and a more robust form of self-consciousness were necessary for us to differentiate between the positive and negative aspects of our natures (which doesn't mean that they only became positive or negative once we identified them as such).

Assume a scientist was investigating the motion of the planets and one day he observed something which didn't fit the current scientific model (e.g. maybe the speed at which the planet orbiting the sun suddenly accelerated and then decelerated again). How would he tell if this anomaly was a miracle or a problem with the model?

A theistic scientist is perfectly capable of considering new models that might better explain the evidence, in spite of the possibility that what they're seeing may well be miraculous. There would be no science today if Catholic scientists hadn't been doing precisely this for the past 1000 years, so I don't understand your objection.

You may also be unaware of the difficult position many atheists are in with this very question, given the tendency to deny the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

 

[AV1611VET]

To readers today it’s obvious that there are two stories with different chronologies,

Either that, or it's a frame narrative.

 

[Speedwell]

Either that, or it's a frame narrative.

Perhaps, although it doesn't much look like one. What I don't understand is why it poses any problem to take them as two different stories.

 

[hedrick]

If you identify Tribalism as original sin, then you would also have to apply it to Chimpanzees as well. The other implication of the above is that humanity is not responsible for their sinful nature since God created us with such a nature already within us.

It's possible for something to have good and bad implications at the same time. I think we evolved to learn by trial and error. This has made us (and other animals) quite adaptable. But it results in errors (sin, for certain kinds of error), which can be damaging at times.

Despite some people's interpretations of Paul, I don't think the Bible ever thought a righteous person made no errors or even committed no sins. Rather, they care about other people, and repent when necessary. Both of these place limits on the kind and amount of sin. It's people who don't care who gets hurt, or think they're better than they are that are the problem. God's grace is present throughout the OT and NT. He accepts us as what we are and forgives us when we sin.

 

[Brother Billy]

Well, yes. I find higher animals like dolphins and other apes fascinating specifically because we do see such strong precursors to human altruism and cruelty there. Since these species appear to still be pre-rational, however, I don't think they can be considered morally responsible for these behaviors.

I agree.

If they ever become fully rational, then I expect that they too will suffer from a sort of original sin.

I don't think that humanity is responsible for its sinful nature, only the results. I should probably specify that I draw from Orthodox rather than Western theology concerning sin, which means both that I view original sin more as an inclination towards sin rather than a hereditary curse in the Augustinian sense, and that it's more along the lines of a spiritual illness that requires healing rather than a crime that demands punishment or pardon.

If that is the case, doesn't it seem bizarre to you that a benevolent being would create a law against sin, specify its punishment as eternal damnation, then create humans with a sinful nature such they would be 100% likely to break this law, and then punish them for sinning (unless they take the "medicine" which he prescribes).

I agree in part, but evolutionary psychology only gets you so far, because both our moral intuitions and our darker impulses can be considered evolutionary adaptations. I think rationality and a more robust form of self-consciousness were necessary for us to differentiate between the positive and negative aspects of our natures (which doesn't mean that they only became positive or negative once we identified them as such).

I agree, but what do you mean "only gets you so far"? What doesn't evolutionary psychology explain?

A theistic scientist is perfectly capable of considering new models that might better explain the evidence, in spite of the possibility that what they're seeing may well be miraculous. There would be no science today if Catholic scientists hadn't been doing precisely this for the past 1000 years, so I don't understand your objection.

I edited my previous post to make my point clearer. Catholic scientists have had no problem because they were working on the assumption that what they saw in nature was the consequence of natural laws and that God never interfered in their observations. When they found something that contradicted their model, they never said "our model is right, what we saw was a miracle". Instead they changed their model until it explained the apparent anomaly. In other words, they wore their atheist hat while in the lab, but put their christian hat back on when they went to church.

You may also be unaware of the difficult position many atheists are in with this very question, given the tendency to deny the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

The Principle of Sufficient Reason is a problem for theists as well. They may say that the ultimate origin of everything is God, but the question then is where did God come from? If they respond by saying that God always existed then why can't the athiest claim that the Universe always existed (which is possible despite the Big Bang) or even that there is an eternal meta-verse which gave rise to our Universe.

 

[AV1611VET]

What I don't understand is why it poses any problem to take them as two different stories.

Because it's a frame narrative?

 

[Speedwell]

Because it's a frame narrative?

So only a problem for those who want to think it's a frame narrative.

 

[AV1611VET]

So only a problem for those who want to think it's a frame narrative.

Whatever, Speedwell.

It's a frame narrative.

If you can't understand that, may I suggest you ask for your money back?

Or don't colleges refund your treasures back to you?

 

[Brother Billy]

I think we need to start with theistic evolution, because evolutionary theory has revolutionized the way that we think about social behavior in general, and cooperation and conflict in specific. Can the traditional understanding of these ideas stand up at all, or must we resign ourselves to viewing them in morally neutral terms? (As I would assume @Ophiolite is doing.)

When I think of conflict in biblical terms, I think of two things in particular:

Isaiah 11:6. "The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them." This seems like a clear indication that the situation in the natural world is less than ideal, and since it did not come about as a result of Adam's rebellion, why is it the natural order of things? Perhaps I stress this more than most do, but I side with Ivan Karamazov: if all the world's long suffering is not redeemed, then Christianity's promise of reconciliation is cheap indeed.

In the New Testament, I'm specifically thinking about passages such as Matthew 5:43-48. Perfection is associated with loving all, and not simply with loving those in your in group. If cooperation is merely another tool to aid the individual or group's flourishing, and conflict an equally legitimate aspect of that tool, then the Christian image in particular is in trouble. The Christian picture of morality is a chimera, since it places on a pedestal an all-encompassing conception of empathy that is at odds with reality as it actually is. This is not devastating, since Christianity also claims that the powers of sin, death, and the devil have laid siege to this world, but what does this really mean in a post-Darwinian world?

(I'm going to summon @zippy2006, since I know he's been interested in having this discussion too.)

Have you read any of Frans de Waals books on the evolution of morality? His view is that human morality can be explained by evolution while at the same time he rejects what he calls "veneer theory" i.e. the view that human morality is "a cultural overlay, a thin veneer hiding an otherwise selfish and brutish nature. Skip to 11:41 if you just want the general idea

 

[Ing Bee]

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 humans were created with the capacity to recognize and engage in sin i.e. humanity was created in a sinful state and Original Sin 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.

Hi there-
This used to be an important question for me, one that singularly shaped my early thought. Without going into too much history, I was brought up in a 6 Day creationist view. Post 1960's American Christians were dealing with a whole host of issues including fallout from the sexual revolution, the hippy movement, and the threat of atheistic communism in the Cold War. I think this was a key factor in how the discussion of Creation and Evolution was framed. The film version of "Inherit the Wind" hadn't helped either.

I'll skip through my decades-long process and just explain where I have landed since that is your question.

Yahweh is clear in both the Old & New Testaments: In the beginning God created the heaven's and the earth. It is impossible to be in relationship with a person, especially the three Divine Persons, if you don't trust them. The God of the Bible, revealed in the prophets and in the Incarnate Word Jesus, claims to have made everything - visible and invisible. You can't believe in a Father who would send a Son to rescue a fallen world if you don't believe he made the fallen world in the first place.

That's point one: All Christians have to believe a self-existing God made everything from nothing just like He has said. More importantly, all Christians need to have been brought into a new relationship with this Magnificent Three (to use Nicky Cruz's fantastic phrase), one of trusting cooperation with His work in and through us.

After that, we should be free to intramurally discuss - in love - the ways he may or may have not done that. There's a lot to discuss: the nature of the Biblical writings, Jesus's use of Genesis in the gospel accounts, Peter and Jude's (and perhaps Jesus's & Paul's) use of 1 Enoch and other Second Temple literature concerning Genesis 6, the primacy of divine revelation, the purpose of the Bible (science book or personal revelation of God's mind, character, will , and actions toward His rebellious human creatures in time)… the list goes on and on. When you know someone, you aren't nervous that someone else will be able to convince you that you don't know them; similarly, Christians who have "tasted and see that the Lord is good" do not have to put up their fists at one another or outsiders who attempt to use science/reason/evolution/whatever to "disprove" the existence of the God you know.

I was teaching some students about the nature of God one Sunday and one asked me if the Earth was millions of years old. I calmly walked through the 4 or so main opinions in the Christian community (6 day, old earth, theistic evolution, polemic myth). In each case I asked: "Can proponents of each say 'In the Beginning God created?'" He got the point.

Here are things I believe we need to recognize in this discussion:

• Divine Revelation is necessarily superior to human wisdom
• People make mistakes and science is both fallible and necessarily falsifiable
• A non-literal reading of Genesis can be a faithful reading
• Jesus loving, Spirit-born Christians can hold a variety of ideas about this topic
• A non-literal reading of Genesis does not undermine biblical authority if it is what God intended
• It is poor exegesis to impose a modern, scientific, post-enlightenment perspective on the biblical authors.
• The biblical authors had a phenomenological approach to the world, not a modern scientific view. Such views are not "wrong" only less accurate. For example, the sun does not "set in the west", but that is a highly practical way to discuss our relationship to the sun. Saying that the Bible is therefore "wrong" is as woodenly ignorant as thinking of the Bible as a science manual.
• 6 Day creations, Old Earth Creationists, Theistic Evolutionists, and Materialist Evolutionists (atheists) all presume and base their arguments on post-Enlightenment rationalism. That's interesting and deserves some careful thought.
• God seems perfectly content to use imperfect people and imperfect knowledge for His purposes. Relational trusting cooperation is the key ("Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness", not perfect scientific understanding.
• Myth is not lies (see Lewis and Tolkien's discussion in "Surprised by Joy")
• Science at its purest is a form of worship
• There is no science/God divide
• Faith is not a mystical feeling but person trust in the Divine Persons who created and rescued us and therefore, Dawkins and others critique of faith is defective and ineffective
• No one should be believed simply because they wear a lab coat
• People do have agendas and biases - that doesn't mean everything they say is wrong
• A book in scripture (like Genesis) can be comprised of different genres. That's okay. To say one part is polemic myth doesn't mean other parts aren't intended to be read as history.
• Archaeology is consistently affirming of the Biblical record
• Sin is a reality
• God could make everything in 6 seconds if he wanted to
• Humans are vastly different, by orders of magnitude, than any other created creature.
• A myth can describe a historical event

If there's a God who knows you, a loving Father you can know through Jesus, then He has shown he is trustworthy and capable of revealing to humans what he's like.

Where does the danger of evolution creep in? If by evolution we mean something like "purposeless, directionless, random chance mutation of biological organisms and systems", then yes, of course that just doesn't jive with being in relationship with a dazzlingly brilliant and powerful Creator and Sustainer of life. There are massive problems with evolution as a metaphysical worldview and even as a comprehensive description of life. Recognition of design, purpose, order, and relationship must be actively suppressed in order to prevent humans from relating to nature as a intentionally designed thing.

If evolution is something less than that, its a discussable issue that faithful disciples of Jesus can disagree on without disrupting their unity in Christ. If it becomes a cause of animosity and division, God is not honored and his Kingdom is not advanced. The way we disagree is perhaps more important than the content of this disagreement when it is not a salvation issue. Paul says what is "of first importance" in 1 Corinthians 15 and the age of the universe or God's specific method of creating is not mentioned.

On the 6-Day Creation side, a deep fear is that questioning the Genesis creation account as occurring exactly as described completely undermines the gospel. Yet no true Christian denies God's power and primacy "In the Beginning". In the Theistic Evolution camp, the deep fear by some I've spoken to is the concern that people will fall away from the Christian faith when they encounter the "fact" of Neo-Darwinian evolution. Fear as a motivation should always be questioned since we have not been "given a spirit of fear and timidity".

If we read Genesis as a true story–one that may or may not be scientifically precise but precise in what it communicates– what do we come away with? A good, powerful creator. Order from Chaos. A noble humanity: male and female created in God's image. A deception. A rebellion. A curse and banishment A promised hope: the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the snake. The curse takes root. Two family lines emerge: those who are murders and violent and those who walk with Yahweh. A judgement and rescue. Further rebellion. A second curse and banishment - the nations are scattered(Babel). A new hope, the seed of Abraham who will draw all nations back to Yahweh. The family begins, the seed of Abraham continues despite opposition.

These are all the musical notes that Jesus played in his earthly ministry. He didn't seem concerned with timescales and fossils but in the redemption of rebellious humanity, destroying the works of the devil, and ushering in the Kingdom of God as the Seed of the woman, the Seed of Abraham and the Son of David, "according to God's definite plan".

I see this issue as a very layered, nuanced Red Herring in which no one is "right" and in which true disciples of Christ poke one another in the eye out of a deeply sincere yet generally misguided effort to "defend Christianity" from other believers who may not be as "faithful" to scripture or as "reasonable" to the book of nature as their counterparts. This debacle can be corrected by focusing on what we have been given as a result of Jesus triumph on the cross (Ephesians 1, 2 Peter 1, Titus 3:3-7).

 

[Speedwell]

Whatever, Speedwell.

It's a frame narrative.

If you can't understand that, may I suggest you ask for your money back?

Or don't colleges refund your treasures back to you?

No, I learned it at church; I don't get my money back. I think only Dispensationalists need it to be a frame narrative.

 

[AV1611VET]

No, I learned it at church;

You learned what a frame narrative is at church!?

Good for your church!

I take it though your church doesn't believe Genesis 1 and 2 make up one?