If evolution is not true, what was the process of creation?

[OldWiseGuy]

You will never prove that God created everything by speaking.... with science.
God's act of creating, is recorded in Genesis and is supernatural...
This means that it is outside of the confines of science, which needs to be observable, testable and repeatable.

Having said that... Evolution is also outside the confines of science due to the fact that it, too, is not observable, testable or repeatable.

On top of that, there is one very important thing that evolution will not touch... where did life come from... Without that little ameba having a spark of "life" to get it up and running... it just decays anyway.

Not to mention that in order to have this one solitary living cell.. you need proteins.. which are super complex and having even just one form by accident is beyond comprehension...

Then, these proteins would have to form in super complex orders and codes. This is necessary to form DNA which is just like a computer program but much much more complex..

Then, these proteins and DNA would have to be inside the cell. The cell would have to have a cell wall, mitochondria, vacuoles, centrosomes, ribosomes, lysosomes, endoplasmic reticulome and all the other parts of a simple cell that would have ALL had to somehow miraculously form at the same time and come together, and get this elusive life force.. before oxidation and decay....

Now, tell me that that doesn't take some faith.

God made stuff complex so there would be no doubt that He created it. All science is doing is confirming this complexity.

 

[princesstatyanna]

If you believe evolution is false, what then do you think or believe was the process of creation? Fair enough if you disagree with darwinian evolution, but think some other sort of theistic evolution process was involved, but if you don't agree with any kind of evolutionary theory how then did birds, animals, fish, humans, come into existence. I am asking about how God created these? Can that be found out by science?

Evolution is a lie and for those Christians who believe in it obviously do not believe that God created the earth and humans. We did NOT come from apes. Wake up and stop letting Satan deceive you. I feel so sorry for you all

 

[Tom 1]

If you believe evolution is false, what then do you think or believe was the process of creation? Fair enough if you disagree with darwinian evolution, but think some other sort of theistic evolution process was involved, but if you don't agree with any kind of evolutionary theory how then did birds, animals, fish, humans, come into existence. I am asking about how God created these? Can that be found out by science?

Scientists working in the relevant fields look into how things work. The existence of God doesn’t fall into that category of study and investigation. The process by which god created the material universe and everything in it is whatever it is, the bible has nothing to say about it.

 

[akaDaScribe]

I have 2 problems with evolution in relation to creation. The first direct contradiction is that animals came before plants. The second is that humans were part of the evolutionary process. If you look at genesis it says that everything came forth, but man was molded. So to me, it is possible that things evolved, but humans were not part of that process.



As far as timeframes are concerned, it is possible to watch a 2 hour movie in 15 minutes. It’s really about how fast you run it.



I think the biggest problem with evolution is that they try to convince people that the way they believe it happened is a fact. We can’t even solve homicides from 20 years ago, but they think they know what happened from the beginning? Think about the number of variables that have to be taken into account just for a sniper. Accounting for all conditions going back 100s/billions of years is unrealistic; especially if you don’t know what they all were.

 

[ronandcarol]

If you believe evolution is false, what then do you think or believe was the process of creation? Fair enough if you disagree with darwinian evolution, but think some other sort of theistic evolution process was involved, but if you don't agree with any kind of evolutionary theory how then did birds, animals, fish, humans, come into existence. I am asking about how God created these? Can that be found out by science?

Please refer to the 1st chapter of the Bible, that would be the book of Genesis. God spoke everything into existence! (faith required) If you are weighing the Word of God against the theory of Darwin, you should continue reading the Bible until you get through the last chapter. But before you begin ask the Holy Spirit to show you the truth that lies within those pages.
ronandcarol

 

[mindlight]

That doesn't really answer my question. Science or rather the sciences are human attempts to understand creation in various aspects, physical laws, its chemistry etc. So if something exists it can be explored in some respects. Things (planets, animals, humans etc) exist, So if all sorts of evolution are false, some other mode of creation must have been involved. I am asking if anyone has a theory of what that might be?

God created the universe from nothing. God created life from the components of that creation in the last 2 days of creation.

He created air and water animals on day 5 and land animals and humans on day 6.

It is not necessary to deny scientific facts in understanding the how of what he did. Big Bang, Abiogenesis and Macro-evolution are after all only theories selected by moderns for their explanatory power. But basically they depend on inference and analogy and cannot be proven beyond all doubt.

A creationist deals with the same facts but basically does not pretend to have an exhaustive explanatory model to hold these together. The coherence of creation afterall lies in the mind of its Creator. Creationists often come over as reactive and single topic focused but they do not have to be. The basic differences are that they believe the universe is a young creation broken by fall and flood. It cannot be fully understood as it was originally created because of that brokenness but there remains enough coherence for a healthy and necessary respect for definite scientific laws. They do not exclude supernatural intervention as an explanation for things. So to look at the big picture theories and their alternatives in a Creationist outlook one by one:

1) Big Bang - Basically the Creationist alternative is that God created the universe pretty much as we see it out of nothing. So individual planets are the result of unique design decisions and the exercise of Divine power rather than an accidental process spanning billions of years.

2) Abiogenesis - chemical evolution has absolutely zero supporting empirical evidence and the creationist explanation of an intelligent being actively creating life is more credible.

3) Macro evolution - basically substitute common ancestry with common Designer and billions of years of accidental emergence with 2 days of directed progress and you get a picture of the development of life. There are similarities between organisms because the same Designer created all life. The differentiation between the organisms is however all important. A human being can mainly be distinguished for instance from a chimp by its brain size, complexity, neuron density and extra functional capabilities. This is why men are capable of modern marvels like the Internet, moon trips, flight etc and chimps are in zoos eating bananas and scratching their bums.

 

[mindlight]

Well some say faith in God is a gift. But if we are talking about science should one not only believe evolution if the evidence is good enough? If there are gaps in fossil records and lack of transitional stages...should we still hold on to it by faith, or look for a different theory? Darwinianism suggested that if it was true we would find lots of transitional fossils did it not? We don't seem to have. There are other theories of evolution of course such as punctuated equibilrium.

I am not questioning whether God spoke, what I am trying to work out is what happened in space and time when he spoke, if it wasn't an evolutionary process?

Evolution is a loaded word and very often all they mean is that an organism is adapting to its environment and that various advantageous and differentiating mutations have been accepted into its genome in a way that qualifies as "speciation". In fact mutation is almost always regressive and harmful and the level of change hypothesised between kinds of creatures is pretty much impossible. But within a species different strains of the same kind of creature may well emerge over time as they adapt to different conditions. So to take the example of dogs and sparrows for instance. There were not 43 different species of sparrow on the ark but there are today. But think of it in a creationist way and you are looking at a genome with a built in capacity to adapt to changing environmental conditions which does so without betraying its basic coding as a special kind of creature. A sparrow does not evolve into a eagle and an ape is distinct from all form of mankind most notably because of its inferior brain.

You can explain the fossil record as a consequence of the flood. Beyond that what needs to be said.

 

[mindlight]

So origins (for creationists) cannot be studied scientifically? Maybe I am too influencd by the evolution theory, and therefore want another material process. But should there not be a material process that is the effect of the divine word (cause) Is there not in the natural a corrolary / effect of the divine word that can be studied? Is it kept hidden from science? Anyone understand what I am struggling with?

Intelligent Design proponents describe this in terms of Information. Life is not possible without the creation of the necessary information to give it coherence, to programme its basic functions and to allow its reproduction. The origination of that information cannot be explained by evolution.

The fact is even the simplest cell could not be created by ANY scientist in a laboratory. So when someone tells you they understand something and can even "predict" patterns in that lifeform they are not saying that they themselves understand sufficiently to duplicate this life form and they are not suggesting that they can "predict" anything that has not already happened.

The movement from mainstream science to Creationism is therefore from an exhaustive and coherent theory, which purports to describe the indescribable in meticulous detail, to a messy and apparently incoherent mess of truthes and observations, which ultimately cohere in a trust of the One who created. Personally I think the Creationist position is the more honest cause it recognises the place of the supernatural, the limits of our actual understanding and is not prepared to fill the void with rationalisations that in fact explain nothing.

 

[Silmarien]

Anyone else thoughts on this? I agree that one cannot believe in both chance/undirected evolution and divinely directed evolution, so materialist neo-darwinism taken as a whole doesn't seem compatible with theism, because its a theory that is worked out in order that God is not needed (i am told). I know Darwin for the the sake of keeping the peace with his wedgewood relatives gave a nod to the Creator a couple of times, but he privately doesn't seem to believe. And certainly the neo-darwinism of Dawkins doesn't give any nod to the Creator.

But could some of the theistic-evolutionists here say how they look at it?

Sure. I subscribe to a somewhat Aristotelian model of evolution, which means I'm relatively close to the non-reductive materialists. I do not necessarily believe that evolution is divinely directed, but I would hold that there is genuine order in the process of natural selection: certain behaviors could not be better evolutionary adaptations than others if reality were a chaotic free for all, so it seems clear that it is not. Cooperation is better for a species than constant competition, and rationality is likely impossible for non-social species. So while direct divine intervention may or may not be taking place, I would say that evolutionary processes seem to be configured to tend in a certain direction. You're not going to get rational crocodiles.

Some atheists will just take the existence of order in nature as a given, or consider it an emergent property (though how it could emerge if there were no underlying order to it is beyond me). I would have once agreed with them, but then I started studying Aquinas and now there are a bunch of things I can't unsee. Evolution is not a threat to theism, and the model of it preferred by anti-theistic materialists seems to be crumbling anyway. See Holistic Darwinism.

 

[dontcountmeout]

The fossil record indicates God learned how to create simple life forms such as algae or sponges long before learning to create invertebrates. Mammals were created more recently. Man does not know how to create such things, but has been learning to edit genes to produce specific traits or abilities within cells.

God does not learn. Learning is change. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. Are you seriously saying that a God who needed to "learn" how to make a living sponge was able prior to this to create the frameworks for time and space, and the rules by which He chose to organize matter? If you really believe this, I wonder how you reconcile these ideas with how God reveals himself in His word.

 

[The Times]

I doubt if you and I will ever see him physically move a mountain, but I think his point was that he would if we needed him to. I think his statements are true literally, as well as figuratively.

He created the world miraculously by literally moving mountains. I understand what you are saying and believe God can and will do, what God can and will do.

My point was more to how Jesus addressed his disciples, to how their faith can move mountains. Read the versus before and after to get a better picture of what Jesus is alluding to.

In this case, the verse before is a rebuke of his disciples, for their lack of faith, because they were unable to heal the demon possesed boy.

Jesus, is saying no works are too great, when it comes down to faith in overcoming the challenges life throws at you.

With further study, we come to discern that Jesus was upset at his disciples, because they had not referred the boy to him and this in Jewush culture, reflected upon their Master. So it, really came down to their lack of trust and faith in Jesus, by failing to acknowledge their lack of faith and this is why Jesus uses the term perverse, which means that their bahaviour as disciples at that moment was below the standard of faith, that Jesus required of them. They failed to acknowledge their failure and had dismissed the ability God has to overcome what they could NOT.

The moral of the teaching, is to have faith and believe in God that he will see you through, no matter how great or large the mountain is, though at first it may seem immovable to you, but to God it is not.

 

[joshua 1 9]

If you believe evolution is false, what then do you think or believe was the process of creation?

God knows the end from the beginning: "Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:" Isaiah 46:10. Some people consider evolution to be the world fine tuning itself. Also there are two distinct evolution paradigms: Atheistic and Theistic Evolution. So often we have to deal with a counterfeit forgery of the real thing.

 

[S.O.J.I.A.]

not really, since science is naturalistic in nature and God is supernatural. naturalistic science would be insufficient to explain how God created all things by the word of His mouth(2 peter 3:5-7).

His ways are higher than ours..

 

[Apologetic_Warrior]

If you believe evolution is false, what then do you think or believe was the process of creation? Fair enough if you disagree with darwinian evolution, but think some other sort of theistic evolution process was involved, but if you don't agree with any kind of evolutionary theory how then did birds, animals, fish, humans, come into existence. I am asking about how God created these? Can that be found out by science?

I believe it has been discovered in Science, DNA is described as containing the instructions for life, and as tiny as DNA is, it is said to have the capacity to contain rather hefty amounts of information. As much as I believe in the inspiration of the Bible, I know that it was written through men. I do not believe any amount of darwinian evolution process could generate DNA, the precise and complicated instructions for life. How could God create DNA? That's the easy part, God by definition is all-powerful, the most powerful being logically possibly conceivable. In the same way Christ turned water into wine, changing the properties of the existing matter perhaps, or even better, creating out of nothing that which did not exist previously. I find it easier to accept intelligence behind super-naturalism such as this, rather than random chaotic unguided purposeless chance after chance ad infinitum.

 

[dms1972]

Scientists working in the relevant fields look into how things work. The existence of God doesn’t fall into that category of study and investigation. The process by which god created the material universe and everything in it is whatever it is, the bible has nothing to say about it.

I know the Bible has nothing to say about it, what I am asking is can study discover it?

 

[dms1972]

.

 

[JoeP222w]

If you believe evolution is false, what then do you think or believe was the process of creation? Fair enough if you disagree with darwinian evolution, but think some other sort of theistic evolution process was involved, but if you don't agree with any kind of evolutionary theory how then did birds, animals, fish, humans, come into existence. I am asking about how God created these? Can that be found out by science?

Creation happened exactly as described in the book of Genesis in the Bible. No evolution involved at all. God created all things perfectly. The fall of man is what corrupted all things.

 

[JoeP222w]

If you believe evolution is false, what then do you think or believe was the process of creation? Fair enough if you disagree with darwinian evolution, but think some other sort of theistic evolution process was involved, but if you don't agree with any kind of evolutionary theory how then did birds, animals, fish, humans, come into existence. I am asking about how God created these? Can that be found out by science?

Creation happened exactly as described in the book of Genesis in the Bible. No evolution involved at all. God created all things perfectly. The fall of man is what corrupted all things.

 

[Petros2015]

Gerald Schroeder - Articles - Evolution

If the fossil record is an accurate description of the flow of life, then the 34 basic body plans that burst into being at the Cambrian, 530 million years ago, comprise all of animal life till today. The tree of life which envisioned a gradual progression of phyla from simple forms such as sponges, on to more complex life such as worms and then on to shelled creatures such as mollusks has been replaced by the bush of life in which sponges and worms and mollusks and all the other of the 34 phyla appeared simultaneously. Each of these bush lines then developed (evolved) a myriad of variations, but the variations always remained within the basic body plan.

Setting aside Genesis interpretations, it seems to me that we were deliberately seeded or things were 'pushed forward' sometime in the Cambrian period. Either the blueprints were already 'built in' or new ones were introduced. I don't feel like this happened randomly, there's a sudden explosion of functional, ordered structures which seems to start accelerating.

Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia

 

[Petros2015]

(sorry, double post)

 

[dms1972]

Sure. I subscribe to a somewhat Aristotelian model of evolution, which means I'm relatively close to the non-reductive materialists. I do not necessarily believe that evolution is divinely directed, but I would hold that there is genuine order in the process of natural selection: certain behaviors could not be better evolutionary adaptations than others if reality were a chaotic free for all, so it seems clear that it is not. Cooperation is better for a species than constant competition, and rationality is likely impossible for non-social species. So while direct divine intervention may or may not be taking place, I would say that evolutionary processes seem to be configured to tend in a certain direction. You're not going to get rational crocodiles.

Some atheists will just take the existence of order in nature as a given, or consider it an emergent property (though how it could emerge if there were no underlying order to it is beyond me). I would have once agreed with them, but then I started studying Aquinas and now there are a bunch of things I can't unsee. Evolution is not a threat to theism, and the model of it preferred by anti-theistic materialists seems to be crumbling anyway. See Holistic Darwinism.

The philosopher Thomas Nagel seems to hold a similiar view, He's an atheist but he disagrees with reductionistic neo-darwinism, and contends that 'mind is not just an afterthought or an accident or an add-on, but a basic aspect of nature.'

I still tend to beleive some sort of evolution, but in the case of man, there seems to be more involved, man is the only animal which speaks. It used to be that anthropologists distinguished man from non-man on the basis of use of tools - but its no longer done on that basis, it now on the basis of language / speech.

 

[NobleMouse]

If you believe evolution is false, what then do you think or believe was the process of creation? Fair enough if you disagree with darwinian evolution, but think some other sort of theistic evolution process was involved, but if you don't agree with any kind of evolutionary theory how then did birds, animals, fish, humans, come into existence. I am asking about how God created these? Can that be found out by science?

I disagree with the broad wholesale changes asserted by ToE ("molecules-to-man" evolution) & billions of years, my faith is that God's word is true and that Genesis isn't the longest turn of phrase/allegorical text ever written... it is describing (albeit not in granular detail). actual historic events that took place during the 6 days of creation.

Because the text is limited we can only speculate what the process was, but here are some doctrinal truths that I think we can build upon:

- God is responsible for creation (Genesis 1:1)
- Jesus was with God in the beginning and all things were created through Jesus (John 1:1-3)
- Many miraculous events recorded in the bible were accomplished by Jesus merely speaking (there are many references available, I'll just pick Matthew 8:5:13 and Matthew 8:23-27).
- We read repeatedly throughout the creation account, "And God said..." and His command was accomplished (Genesis 1)

From this, it can be known that God was responsible for creation (it was not an undirected set of random events), that this was accomplished by His word, through Jesus Christ, which has the power to accomplish all things... having a real, material affect on the physical world.

The following gives a little more context around the creation events:

Day 5 (Genesis 1:20-21 ESV):
"And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind."

Day 6 (Genesis 1:24-25, 26, 2:7 ESV):
"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."

"Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. "

"...then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature."

The text sometimes tells us "let the earth bring forth..." and "...of dust from the ground" so here we can discern that God is using existing "material" that He has already created; however, it is repeatedly made clear: "So God created...", "And God made...", "then the Lord God formed...". Every single time we are given a picture that God was directly involved. Since he was willing to send His only Son (whose resurrection we celebrated yesterday) to die for our sins, we can also infer that creating us (people) was very special and that He took great care (see Psalm 139:14).

All I can infer from the text is that God spoke life into existence (through Jesus Christ), either using existing matter or creating new matter to use for living creatures. It seems clear that there was a process, but that this process happened within the boundaries of a day and was directly orchestrated by God. The result was fully formed and "complex". This is what the text gives us (whether we read it in English or Hebrew) and it is certainly within God's power to do everything He said He did, the way He said He did it, in the time He said He did it, and in the end He said it was very good.

Where the view I hold to (biblical creation) differs most significantly from ToE is that it allows for supernatural events (whereas ToE seeks to explain all events by natural processes). As I've called out a few times, biblical creation portrays a God who is involved in the creation of life, which is evident in the text. We're often told Christianity is not a blind faith and I believe this applies to creation as well. There is no evidence that refutes the possibility of the creation account... whether we're looking at the fossil record, DNA, or what is actually observable about life. Can "how" be determined through science? Not if the only possible answers are those driven by naturalistic assumptions. Operating under the naturalistic/evolutionary paradigm omits the possibility of what the bible repeatedly makes apparently true - that God is outside of natural law. What natural law takes 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish and breaks it up to feed thousands of people with 12 baskets of scraps? What natural law explains how messiah's are born to virgins, how the dead are made alive again, etc...? No other faith or religion offers a living savior that demonstrated power and victory over death and promises to do the same for us. Do we have faith in all these things, even to the extent that we trust Jesus will have victory over our sins and raise us to eternal life as well, yet not the faith to trust that He created us according to His word??