Is Evolution Going Anywhere?

[Mallon]

Nothing you have said makes evolution a non-starter for Christians.

I dunno... that cartoon was pretty convincing.

 

[Optimax]

Nothing you have said makes evolution a non-starter for Christians.

For a Christian Gen 1:26 & 2:7 should be THE non starter for evolution.

Gen 1:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
KJV

Gen 2:7

7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
KJV


Why would a Christian, NOT beliive what God said He did?

Why then should one believe what He said about Jesus?

If God said He created man and lied, then we may as well forget Jesus as well because He might have lied about that as well.

NO!

God does not lie and what He said He did, HE did.

Man was created a man.

He therefore did not need to "evolve", but we do need Jesus.

 

[Assyrian]

Jesus spoke in parables, do you think his Father might too?

 

[Optimax]

Jesus spoke in parables, do you think his Father might too?

Jesus spoke in parables and explained them.

The parable was to explain the spiritual by a natural thing.

He explained the kingdom of God by comparing to one who sowed seed.

The sower sowed the seed.

The seed is the Word of God.

 

[Assyrian]

Jesus spoke in parables and explained them.

The parable was to explain the spiritual by a natural thing.

He explained the kingdom of God by comparing to one who sowed seed.

The sower sowed the seed.

The seed is the Word of God.

Actually he spoke in parables and explained some of them. In some he explained the supernatural by the natural as you say, in others he warned of coming judgment in story form like the parables of the tenants, or simply taught us how we should treat other people, like the parable of the Good Samaritan. But the point is, he told stories that weren't literally true, that weren't meant to be taken as literal truth, they were meant as stories and metaphors through which we could learn the real truth he was teaching. You seem to think if God wasn't speaking literal truth when Genesis describes God as a potter making Adam from clay, then God is a liar, but God incarnate spoke to us in parables and metaphors, aren't we supposed to learn what God is like through Jesus? "If you have seen me you have seen the Father".

If you look through the Old Testament it is full of parables too. That is how God loves to speak to us, and one very common metaphor is that God is the potter and we are the clay.
Job 10:9 Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust?
Job 33:6 Behold, I am toward God as you are; I too was pinched off from a piece of clay.
Isaiah 29:16 You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, "He did not make me"; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, "He has no understanding"?
Isaiah 64:8 But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Jer 18:6 "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
Do we have to take those literally too, if each one of us wasn't made of clay by the divine potter, is God lying? Just because it turns out that Genesis isn't literal, it doesn't mean God is a liar or that he didn't create us

 

[Optimax]

Actually he spoke in parables and explained some of them. In some he explained the supernatural by the natural as you say, in others he warned of coming judgment in story form like the parables of the tenants, or simply taught us how we should treat other people, like the parable of the Good Samaritan. But the point is, he told stories that weren't literally true, that weren't meant to be taken as literal truth, they were meant as stories and metaphors through which we could learn the real truth he was teaching. You seem to think if God wasn't speaking literal truth when Genesis describes God as a potter making Adam from clay, then God is a liar, but God incarnate spoke to us in parables and metaphors, aren't we supposed to learn what God is like through Jesus? "If you have seen me you have seen the Father".

If you look through the Old Testament it is full of parables too. That is how God loves to speak to us, and one very common metaphor is that God is the potter and we are the clay.
Job 10:9 Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust?
Job 33:6 Behold, I am toward God as you are; I too was pinched off from a piece of clay.
Isaiah 29:16 You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay, that the thing made should say of its maker, "He did not make me"; or the thing formed say of him who formed it, "He has no understanding"?
Isaiah 64:8 But now, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Jer 18:6 "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the LORD. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel.
Do we have to take those literally too, if each one of us wasn't made of clay by the divine potter, is God lying? Just because it turns out that Genesis isn't literal, it doesn't mean God is a liar or that he didn't create us

The body is made of

1. Oxygen (65%)
2. Carbon (18%)
3. Hydrogen (10%)
4. Nitrogen (3%)
5. Calcium (1.5%)
6. Phosphorus (1.0%)
7. Potassium (0.35%)
8. Sulfur (0.25%)
9. Sodium (0.15%)
10. Magnesium (0.05%)
11. Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, Iron (0.70%)
12. Lithium, Strontium, Aluminum, Silicon, Lead, Vanadium, Arsenic, Bromine (trace amounts)

Could say just so much dirt/clay.

He does mold us like a potter molds clay. Except the stubborn ones take longer.

 

[Assyrian]

The body is made of

1. Oxygen (65%)
2. Carbon (18%)
3. Hydrogen (10%)
4. Nitrogen (3%)
5. Calcium (1.5%)
6. Phosphorus (1.0%)
7. Potassium (0.35%)
8. Sulfur (0.25%)
9. Sodium (0.15%)
10. Magnesium (0.05%)
11. Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, Iron (0.70%)
12. Lithium, Strontium, Aluminum, Silicon, Lead, Vanadium, Arsenic, Bromine (trace amounts)

Could say just so much dirt/clay.

So as long as Adam was made of similar chemical ingredients, the Genesis story doesn't have to mean God stuck his fingers in a lump of mud any more than he did with us.

Actually I don't think the picture is talking about chemical composition at all, but is telling us that God is the one who formed us and created us, by his almighty power according to his will an purpose, that we are his workmanship and owe him our very existence.

He does mold us like a potter molds clay. Except the stubborn ones take longer.

Indeed

 

[gluadys]

For a Christian Gen 1:26 & 2:7 should be THE non starter for evolution.

Why?

Gen 1:26
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
KJV

Gen 2:7

7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
KJV


Why would a Christian, NOT beliive what God said He did?

But I don't know of any Christian (or Jewish) TE who does NOTbelieve God did as the scriptures say: created us in his image--out of the dust of the earth.

No problem for evolution there.

 

[Papias]

Optimax wrote:

The body is made of

1. Oxygen (65%)
2. Carbon (18%)
3. Hydrogen (10%)
4. Nitrogen (3%)
5. Calcium (1.5%)
6. Phosphorus (1.0%)
7. Potassium (0.35%)
8. Sulfur (0.25%)
9. Sodium (0.15%)
10. Magnesium (0.05%)
11. Copper, Zinc, Selenium, Molybdenum, Fluorine, Chlorine, Iodine, Manganese, Cobalt, Iron (0.70%)
12. Lithium, Strontium, Aluminum, Silicon, Lead, Vanadium, Arsenic, Bromine (trace amounts)

Could say just so much dirt/clay.

Somebody didn't check their facts before posting. clay is:

1. Oxygen 51%
2. Silicon 30%
3. Aluminum 19%

Not much at all like the human body. The composition of many things, such as a comet, are closer than clay. Good job Optimax, by taking an obvious metaphor literally, you've made God into a liar!

Papias

 

[Optimax]

**

 

[Notedstrangeperson]

How, then, does evolution create systems that imbue meaning? It does so because the specialization of the nervous system is adaptive. Meaning is semantic shorthand. It is a way of attaching lots of information to what may be a physically simple object. For example, a rose, though it is just the reproductive organ of a particular thorny plant, carries with it so many of the love stories and ideas of Western civilization. And this applies in a simplified way as well to animals: when a bee sees a rose, it does not just see a particular visual pattern, it sees a place to find nectar for the hive. In its own crude way, it has added information (contained in its genes) to the physical symbol that is a rose, and has acted appropriately.

This reminds me of yet another quote from 'What We Believe but Cannot Prove' - but I'll try and answer this myself rather than continually quote someone else.

I think the arguement about intrinsic vs. extrinsic value is alot like the argument about subjective vs. objective morality. Is something only valuable because somebody else likes it? Or is it valuable simply because it exists, regardless of our opinion of it? I'm inclined to say the latter. The idea that something (or someone?) is valuable because they are well-loved seems more like a popularity contest.

To put your example in reverse, if evolution has engineered our brains to find something disgusting or frightening is it fair to get rid of it? Screw-worm flies for example are particularly horrifying parasites, so much so that we are deliberatly trying to drive them to extinction. But do we have the right to? Doesn't the screw-worm have as much right to exist as a pretty rose or even a human?

Evolution?

Forget what the "odds" are that a man could have Just evolved, given the complex structure and design of the body.

Yes, every creationists answers evolutionist threads the same way, which tends to derail the whole debate. We can debate whether evolution actually happened on one of the other many threads in the creationist subforum.

My original question is whether evolution has any kind of 'purpose' or 'direction', something which divides the theist from the atheist evolutionist. What make something valuable? Why do we value some living things more than others? What will mankind look like in another million years?

One creationist criticism is that:

"Evolution knows no sin in the biblical sense of missing one's purpose (in relation to God) ... If sin is seen as a harmless evolutionary factor, then one has lost the key for finding God, which is not resolved by adding “God” to the evolutionary scenario."

Is evolution meaningless? If so how do we solve this problem?

 

[Papias]

NSP wrote:

My original question is whether evolution has any kind of 'purpose' or 'direction', something which divides the theist from the atheist evolutionist.

I agree that this is both an interesting question, and one that may work to clarify some of the many differences between TEs and atheists.


It seems clear to me that evolution does have a purpose, that God is behind it all, constantly bringing about greater complexity, greater awareness, and greater cooperation. I think those three trends, and probably others, are empirically undeniable.

Papias