Is evolution theory compatible with Genesis.

ArmyMatt · Nov 20, 2012

if your best info comes from a guy who schismed himself up the Orthodox chain of command, only to be accepted as a retired Orthodox heirarch without ever having a diocese, your info comes from a fairly weak source.

I am not saying His Eminence is not Orthodox now, but he has had some off ideas in the past to say the least.

127.0.0.1 · Nov 20, 2012

Well, I'll admit I don't know much about abp. Lazar Puhalo, so I won't comment on his standing.

There's plenty of evidence in favor of evolution without needing to bring Puhalo into the picture. However to this point, I'm not familiar with any other narrative on Creation, other than the view which takes it literally, word for word.

As far as his radically ravings on youtube, I've watched, nearly all of them. Most of the old ones are just about refuting the Toll houses, and a lot of the newer ones are about helping the environment and the poor.

ArmyMatt · Nov 20, 2012

there is only evidence there for those who want to see it. for those who don't, like me, it's a theory that, in my opinion, is weak.

Cappadocious · Nov 28, 2012

What have you read on the subject?

ArmyMatt · Nov 29, 2012

in all honesty, not that much in a long while, aside from folks like Fr Seraphim Rose and discussions with monastics. from the atheist side, I have a lot of atheist friends, whom I have talked this kind of stuff over with and it just doesn't make sense to me when I hear it, with who God is and why He created us.

so the POV of the monastics I have spoken with, some of whom are really holy, seem the most reasonable.

Cappadocious · Nov 29, 2012

Well, this is how I see it.

On the news, they report that a city has been destroyed by a tsunami.

They report the various natural causes for this tsunami.

Orthodox Christians would not disagree with any of these causes.

However, it is also our belief that destruction cannot come upon a city unless the Lord has done it, and that all things are sustained by God.

Do we write off the natural movements of the earth and weather which produced the tsunami because of this? No, not really. Not if we believe in a living God who sustains literally everything and facilitates everything in some sense, versus some watchmaker god who intervenes from time to time.

As Orthodox Christians, we accept multiple antinomies; that is, mutually exclusive truths which we are unable to reconcile, but cannot help but hold simultaneously.

That God is both immanent and transcendent.

That while there is death everywhere around us, death has been destroyed and not one dead remains in a tomb.

Now, it is also possible to hold that man was produced through a series of ancestors involving death and the various natural powers we see every day and to simultaneously hold that man was created in the Image of God. If you try to modify one of the two truths to "fit" the other, then you have destroyed the antinomy, you see.

So one can hold to the theory of evolution without trying to form some sort of diseased hybrid, simply by becoming comfortable with antinomy. And really, we're already quite good at that. We've had millennia of practice.

I would encourage you to read a text that overviews the theory of evolution before dismissing it. It would remove certain falsehoods from your mind which are often bandied about both by those who oppose and those who hold to the theory, such as it relying upon "random chance" or something of the sort.

Just a few thoughts.

Thekla · Nov 29, 2012

Did I post this in here before ?

Sorry if I did, but here is a link to the discussion on creation from The Law of God, Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy

The Law of God (scroll down to 2. Creation of the Earth, the Visible World, waaay down the page )

This is what I used with my children (as it was what we had at hand), but thought it was worth adding here.

He notes that we are still in the 7th day, and that the sun was not created til after the early days.

ArmyMatt · Nov 30, 2012

Capp, I have. when I talked with my atheist friends they gave me all kinds of stuff to check out. I don't buy it. as I pointed out earlier, if evolution were compatible, then why do post Darwin saints like St Nektarios of Aegina and St John Maximovitch reject it, as well as holy elders like Elder Cleopa of Romania and Elder Paisios? these are folks who drew close to the One who actually saw it all go down, and if they say no, then no secular scientist can write anything that can convince me otherwise.

but that's just me.

Cappadocious · Nov 30, 2012

ArmyMatt said:
saints like St Nektarios of Aegina and St John Maximovitch reject it, as well as holy elders like Elder Cleopa of Romania and Elder Paisios?

They seem to reject the metaphysical positions of "darwinists" (that God didn't create man, that life came about through random chance, that the fit should survive, etc). Those are metaphysical positions that, of course, any Orthodox Christian would reject outright. And they emerged alongside Darwinism in the same way that the justification for use of the atom bomb emerged alongside advances in physics. But one must not equate the metaphysical with natural science.

The natural world indicates that evolution took place. Now, you could take a few neoplatonic angles to avoid this (the world looks different because of the Fall, etc.) but such cosmological claims lie outside of the realm of science, anyway, so they don't affect the scientific claims of biology, which claims to work within the realm of the observable world, fallen and altered or not.

You also fell into the trap of collapsing antinomies; "if evolution were compatible..." you said. The whole point of antinomy is the incompatibility of two truths.

ArmyMatt · Nov 30, 2012

Cappadocious said:
They seem to reject the metaphysical positions of "darwinists" (that God didn't create man, that life came about through random chance, that the fit should survive, etc). Those are metaphysical positions that, of course, any Orthodox Christian would reject outright. And they emerged alongside Darwinism in the same way that the justification for use of the atom bomb emerged alongside advances in physics. But one must not equate the metaphysical with natural science.

The natural world indicates that evolution took place. Now, you could take a few neoplatonic angles to avoid this (the world looks different because of the Fall, etc.) but such cosmological claims lie outside of the realm of science, anyway, so they don't affect the scientific claims of biology, which claims to work within the realm of the observable world, fallen and altered or not.

You also fell into the trap of collapsing antinomies; "if evolution were compatible..." you said. The whole point of antinomy is the incompatibility of two truths.

the natural world as we know it now yes, but you are right that the Fall and Flood exist outside the scientific claims, then if they happened, the natural order would only work up until the Fall. prior to the Fall we would have no conception of what that would be like.

you also state that it is possible that man evolved from many ancestors, which means we evolved from some primitive thing. for one, I think it was Elder Paisios who said that is gross blasphemy, and two, that is not what is seen in Genesis. I don't believe what you do about antimony in this case. I take Genesis literally, so evolution is not compatible in my eyes.

I have heard these arguments before, and you won't convince me, especially anything about humans evolving.

Cappadocious · Nov 30, 2012

ArmyMatt said:
I don't believe what you do about antimony in this case.

Well, then I guess agree to disagree.

I would ask, though, since you take genesis literally,

What was outside of the garden of eden?

jckstraw72 · Nov 30, 2012

some of the Fathers specify that the animals lived outside the Garden -- thats why they were brought to Adam to be named - because they were not already in the Garden with him. But the Fathers are also quite clear that the entirety of the earth, even outside the Garden, was also as a paradise, although the Garden was greater still. St. Theophilus of Antioch writes that the entire earth contained trees like those in Paradise, although the Tree of Life and of Knowledge were greater still. Off the top of my head I know that St. Symeon the New Theologian is abundantly clear that the entirety of creation was paradisiacal. This is why St. Paul tells us that the entire creation awaits its redemption - because the entire creation is fallen. What we experience now was not the experience of Adam, whether inside or outside the Garden.

Cappadocious · Nov 30, 2012

jckstraw72 said:
some of the Fathers specify that the animals lived outside the Garden -- thats why they were brought to Adam to be named - because they were not already in the Garden with him. But the Fathers are also quite clear that the entirety of the earth, even outside the Garden, was also as a paradise, although the Garden was greater still. St. Theophilus of Antioch writes that the entire earth contained trees like those in Paradise, although the Tree of Life and of Knowledge were greater still. Off the top of my head I know that St. Symeon the New Theologian is abundantly clear that the entirety of creation was paradisiacal. This is why St. Paul tells us that the entire creation awaits its redemption - because the entire creation is fallen. What we experience now was not the experience of Adam, whether inside or outside the Garden.

That's not very literal to the Genesis account.

jckstraw72 · Dec 1, 2012

Cappadocious said:
That's not very literal to the Genesis account.

how so?

Cappadocious · Dec 1, 2012

jckstraw72 said:
how so?

It treats the Garden of Eden as an allegory for the world before the Fall, instead of an actual Garden containing paradise. Instead of Adam and Eve being expelled from the unfallen Garden into the world outside, they are expelled from the unfallen world in general. That doesn't seem literal to me.

ArmyMatt · Dec 1, 2012

all of the world was a Paradise before the Fall, because God created it and proclaimed it good. when man fell, creation fell with him. the Garden was a specific area within creation, because the rivers are named that border it.

in the unfallen state, all of the space time that Adam and Eve would have experienced were radically different than the way we know now, so you cannot use today's standards of "outside" to describe the spiritual change that happened during the Fall. what Eden is, is a very different reality than we now know.

mathetes123 · Dec 1, 2012

Cappadocious said:
It treats the Garden of Eden as an allegory for the world before the Fall, instead of an actual Garden containing paradise. Instead of Adam and Eve being expelled from the unfallen Garden into the world outside, they are expelled from the unfallen world in general. That doesn't seem literal to me.

If the first Adam was an allegorical figure, what about the last Adam? Before you answer, consider the Bible traces the last adam's geneology back to the first Adam? At what point in the geneology did an allegorical person beget an historical person? In your experience, has an allegorical person ever begat an historical person?

jckstraw72 · Dec 1, 2012

no the Garden is still literally a garden and it was still Paradise (the rest of the earth was little "p" paradise) -- there was/is something unique about the Garden, for it alone out of creation did not fall. Adam and Eve were expelled out into the world that had fallen with their sin. The whole world was created as a paradise in the sense that there was no corruption, no death, etc -- but yet there was still something greater/higher about the Garden.

Cappadocious · Dec 1, 2012

jckstraw72 said:
no the Garden is still literally a garden and it was still Paradise (the rest of the earth was little "p" paradise) -- there was/is something unique about the Garden, for it alone out of creation did not fall. Adam and Eve were expelled out into the world that had fallen with their sin. The whole world was created as a paradise in the sense that there was no corruption, no death, etc -- but yet there was still something greater/higher about the Garden.

Where does it talk about that in Genesis?

ArmyMatt · Dec 2, 2012

well, Cain was banished to an area called Nod which is east of Eden, if you were wondering about the world that fell with them. so Eden was still seen, even after they were kicked out. God told Adam he would til the earth, but it was the earth outside of the Garden that he tilled.

as far as Creation being a paradise as well, God created it and called it good. so if the universe was good from the beginning, and was exactly the same is it is now, than disease, death, tsunamis, black holes, lava spills, etc would also be good.

Is evolution theory compatible with Genesis.

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