Is it Orthodox to believe in God directed evolution?

forgivensinner001 said:

I just don't worry about the details anymore as, at this point, there is no way to know those details for certain.

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But we know by faith in what God has revealed to us.

May peace be upon thee and with thy spirit.

Matthew777 said:

But we know by faith in what God has revealed to us.

May peace be upon thee and with thy spirit.

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*shrugs*

If you feel it is important to debate the issue then I wish you well with it. I have much more pressing concerns, myself regarding my salvation. But if it makes you feel any better, I strongly sympathize with the YEC position and held that position myself until recently. I was all over AiG and Kent Hovind's seminars. Then I converted to Orthodoxy and realized that if I spent as much time and effort on eliminating sin from my life as I spent arguing and debating creation/evolution, I'd be halfway to Sainthood.

But to clarify my current position, I'm not an evolutionist and I can't really say I'm a YEC either. I believe Adam and Eve were real people, otherwise why the need for a Saviour? I guess I'm somewhere between OEC and TE but could swing YEC with no problem. It's really not an issue for me and understanding the exact details has no bearing on my salvation, no matter what anyone else thinks or says.

ForgivenSinner where are you hiding your rep button???

In IC XC,
Marjorie

forgivensinner001 said:

*shrugs*

If you feel it is important to debate the issue then I wish you well with it..

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I wouldn't like to argue. The holy fathers can speak for themselves.
I do find it important to have the patristic understanding on this, though I am not fond of the "young earth" vs. "old earth" distinction.
We have no idea of what time was like for Adam and Eve before the fall.

May peace be upon thee and with thy spirit.

Matthew777 said:

I wouldn't like to argue. The holy fathers can speak for themselves.

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What the fathers say though, just like sacred scripture, is distilled and made manifest through the mind of the church. Not as individual verses, quotes or snippets. To my knowledge, as other people have said, the church has not spoken about a literal six days among other topics. That is what people are trying to say, and as you continually rebut this you are giving the appearance that you are trying to argue this point.

Shouldn't this be rather basic though? If the Bible says something, and the church fathers agree, then we should agree also.

May peace be upon thee and with thy spirit.

Matthew777 said:

Shouldn't this be rather basic though? If the Bible says something, and the church fathers agree, then we should agree also.

May peace be upon thee and with thy spirit.

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No one is disagreeing with what the Bible says. The Genesis account of creation is very lacking in detail, and we have no idea what one day was (to God, a day is like 1000 yrs, and 1000 yrs like a day). And ALL of the Fathers DO NOT agree on various subjects, evolution being one of them. Nothing is considered infallible unless it has been defined in an Ecumenical Council. No Council has ever come together to adopt a formal position on evolution.

There are other theories of evolution besides Darwin's, btw.

Grand_Duchess-Elizaveta said:

There are other theories of evolution besides Darwin's, btw.

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I am quite aware of that.
I just thought we should be closest to the fathers as possible in all our beliefs.

May peace be upon thee and with thy spirit.

Ever thought about the complexity of the human eye?

How did that come about, in concert with so many of the other incredible human physiological complexities?

Ever seen any real, conclusive evidence that one species has ever become an entirely new and different species?

I am just musing, folks. I really could care less about evolution.

I used to believe in it.

Now I don't.

Maximus said:

Ever thought about the complexity of the human eye?

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I read Darwin on Trial and he has an excerpt from Michael Behe's book describing how the eye works and there is no way something like that evolved undirected from a "photo-sensitive organ." The complexity of just that one system is staggering.

I sometimes wonder if, when Stephen Jay Gould passed, God didn't introduce Himself as the Equilibrium Punctuator.

While I am not saying they are true, as I don't strictly go either way, there *are* answers to the "human eye" thing from an evolutionary standpoint, whether or not they are good answers: http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml

In IC XC,
Marjorie

Marjorie said:

While I am not saying they are true, as I don't strictly go either way, there *are* answers to the "human eye" thing from an evolutionary standpoint, whether or not they are good answers: http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml

In IC XC,
Marjorie

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Squids and mollusks live under water. Water provides significant protection from UV (and other) radiation from the sun. If a squid were capable of living outside water it would be blind within days or even hours. Its eye is designed well for its environment as our eyes are designed well for our environment. The location of our retinas and the placement of blood vessels in the fronts of our eyes provides protection to the sensitive parts. We have built in shades, as it were.

Also, that article is clearly atheistic and so has to be taken with the proverbial grain of salt as does anything from a scientist who opposes intelligent design. I've heard all the arguments about the integrity of scientists but an atheistic scientist is going to discount the possibility of a creator out of hand and search for a way to interpret the data accordingly.

But, like you, I can go either way on the evolution/creation "issue" so it's not a big deal. I don't get caught up in the creation/theistic evolution debate but I will point out that evolution need not be atheistic. At least until they start getting ugly, then I'll pick up my pearls and walk away.

It is Orthodox to believe what is Orthodox.

May peace be upon thee and with thy spirit.

Maximus said:

Ever thought about the complexity of the human eye?

How did that come about, in concert with so many of the other incredible human physiological complexities?

Ever seen any real, conclusive evidence that one species has ever become an entirely new and different species?

I am just musing, folks. I really could care less about evolution.

I used to believe in it.

Now I don't.

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It really depends upon how you differentiate between species, and scientists don't all agree about that. Still, gradual variations across generations have (and it has been observed) produced differences in offspring that are sufficient to prevent the two kinds of offspring from being able to reproduce with one another. That has been observed in fruit flies, and inability to reproduce is one of the ways scientists identify different species. They are still fruit flies. Also, single-celled algae have, as the result of accidentally being moved to a different environment, produced (after several generations of variations) multi-celled offspring, and that is considered to be enough difference to call it a new species of algae. Speciation is a very gradual process that happens in response to environmental changes. One species does not suddenly reproduce another in just one generation. Of course, the question does occur to me, how do they classify the intermediate offspring?
I have owned and spawned some types of aquarium fish that would be a good argument for the occurenc of speciation. It's not that we have directly observed it in their case, but that the genetic relationship is clearly there. Among the small livebearing fish there are some closely related species - guppies, mollies, swordtails and platys - that are easy to keep and breed readily. They share features that indicate how closely related they are, but only the swordtails and platys can still interbreed and produce young that are fertile, although any male among that group of types may attempt to mate with any female. You may also know about mules - the offspring of a horse and a donkey, and mules are normally sterile, although not always. The fact that horses and donkeys can mate to produce young indicates how closely related they are, but the sterility of their offspring indicates how different.

I don't buy into materialistic evolution, of course. (You can't do that and be Christian.) I maybe buy into intelligent design, but I'm not sure how much of it. I'm just not scientist enough to figure all that out, but it is interesting.

Matthew 777 said:

Shouldn't this be rather basic though? If the Bible says something, and the church fathers agree, then we should agree also.

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If. The Church Fathers, according to the best information I have so far, do not seem to agree regarding what is meant by "day" in Genesis 1, and there is a real difference between "historical" and "literal" (of the letter). God told Adam that he would die in the day that he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Would you say that's a 24-hour day? Have you also noticed that most of the early Fathers (ante-Nicene) expected Christ to return within a few years or decades to destroy their persecutor, Rome?

It is really fairly arrogant to assume that, if someone disagrees with what you think is patristic or a correct interpretation, that person does not believe the Biblical witness.

countrymouse33ad said:

The Church Fathers, according to the best information I have so far, do not seem to agree regarding what is meant by "day" in Genesis 1, and there is a real difference between "historical" and "literal" (of the letter). God told Adam that he would die in the day that he ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Would you say that's a 24-hour day? Have you also noticed that most of the early Fathers (ante-Nicene) expected Christ to return within a few years or decades to destroy their persecutor, Rome?

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The best information available in the internet that I have seen:
Genesis and Early Man

The Orthodox Patristic Understanding

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/phronema/evolution_frseraphim_kalomiros.aspx