Is there a denomination that accepts theistic evolution/old earth?

The Liturgist · Nov 29, 2019

Oscarr said:
If we view God as anyone less, we are not viewing the God of the Bible and we are following a God whom our omniscient God doesn't know about. The God of the Bible said that He is the only God there is, and and is no other (Isaiah 45:5). So if there are any other Gods around who come short of omnipotence, He doesn't know about them.

There are no other gods as such; the Christian believes in one God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost; there are also demons who impersonate Him, and who also pretend to be other deities, fuelling the fires of counterfeit Christian cults and Pagan religions. They also impersonate the angels. If you read the Sayings of the Desert Fathers and other books about monasticism, you will find numerous sad stories of monks who were deluded by fallen angels pretending to be, well, unfallen angels; in several cases these evil demons persuaded a guillable monk who suffered from pride that owing to his spiritual prowress, he could fly; the monk, believing them, would leap off one of the steep cliffs which abound at the sites of the early monasteries in Egypt, Syria, the Holy Land, Turkey, Iraq and Greece.

Daniel9v9 · Nov 29, 2019

Just to keep things very simple and on point, my 2c is that any theory that involves death before the fall can be disregarded, as death is certainly a result of sin and not part of the created order.

Jamdoc · Nov 29, 2019

The Liturgist said:
@Albion is correct - most denominations accept Old Earth Theistic Evolutionism. I will list some of them to give you an example of the scope we are dealing with:

- Anglicanism (all provinces, including the Anglican Church in Australia, even the extremely conservative Archdiocese of Sydney, the Anglican Church in North America, the Episcopal Church USA, the Church of England, the Church of Ireland, the Church in Wales, the Scottish Episcopalian Church, the Anglican Church of Ghana, the Anglican Church of South Africa, the Anglican Church of Tanzania, the Mar Thoma Syrian Church (which is in India, not Syria), the Church of South India, the Church of North India, the Church of Pakistan, the Anglican Province of Egypt, the Spanish Reformed Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Anglican Church of New Zealand / Aotearoa, and many others).
- The American Baptist Convention
- The Assyrian Church of the East
- The Ancient Church of the East
- The Christian Church / Disciples of Christ
- The CCCC (Conservative Congregational Christian Conference; my denomination!)
- The Eastern Orthodox Communion (all members, including the Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Georgian Orthodox, Romanian Orthodox, Bulgarian Orthodox, the Orthodox Church in America, the Antiochian Orthodox, the Ukrainian Orthodox, the Albanian Orthodox, the Latvian Orthodox, the Estonian Orthodox, the American Carpatho-Rusyn Orthodox Diocese, and some smaller Orthodox churches that do not have their own parishes in the US such as the Polish Orthodox, the Czech and Slovakian Orthodox, the Macedonian Orthodox, the Finnish Orthodox, the Japanese Orthodox, the Cypriot Orthodox, and the Orthodox churches of Alexandria and All Africa, Jerusalem, Sinai, Moldova, Bessarabia, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and generally speaking, the Old Calendarists and Russian Old Rite Orthodox / Old Believers, who are in the US)
- The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
- The Evangelical United Brethren
- The Evangelical Lutheran Synod
- The Evangelical Covenant Order (of Presbyterians, disgruntled former PCUSA)
- The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (mostly)
- The Moravian Church
- The North American Lutheran Church (ex-ELCA)
- The Oriental Orthodox Communion (Armenian Apostolic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Eritrean Orthodox, Indian Orthodox/Malankara Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox)
- The Orthodox Presbyterian Church and The Presbyterian Church in America (in some parishes; your mileage will vary I think)
- The Presbyterian Church, USA
- The Reformed Church in America
- The Roman Catholic Church (including all Sui Juris Eastern Catholic churches such as the Ukrainian Greek Catholics, the Ruthenian Greek Catholics, of which Andy Warhol was a member, the Melkites, the Maronites, the Chaldeans, et cetera)
- The Southern Baptist Church (some congregations, it could be hit or miss)
- The Lutheran Church, Wisconsin Synod (same as above)
- The United Church of Christ
- The United Methodist Church

The Missouri Synod, Wisconsin Synod, and the Southern Baptist Church are congregational, but I haven’t heard of any of their congregations being especially fierce about this issue. I attended a Missouri Synod church for a while and never heard this mentioned; later I attended an ELCA parish. and this being before the recent leftward shift in that denomination, the content of the sermons was pretty much identical, as was the music (lovely in both cases). In the case of the SBC, the Presbyterian Church in America, and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, its probably a good idea to just visit their website before attending; if it does not include any anti-evolution tracts or links to Answers In Genesis, you should be fine. You can also always ask.

There are several smaller denominations which I have not listed (but to be fair, the CCCC and the Moravians are pretty small, I just happen to like them), which should also be fine. I don’t know anything about Pentecostal or Charismatic churches, so I can’t help you there. I also don’t know anything about the Calvary Chapel, the Anabaptists, the Seventh Day Adventists or the more evangelical Quakers.

Also I would assume many non-denominational evangelical churches are not into the creationism debates.

I personally am a theistic evolutionist, because I prefer to use Alexandrian-style allegorical and typological-prophetic exegesis of the Old Testament to the literal-historical method of the School of Antioch, as did Cyril of Alexandria, Origen, Athanasius (who defended the doctrine of the Trinity and saved Christianity from the counterfeit Arian cult the Roman Emperors tried to replace it with in the fourth century), and Cyril (who preserved Christianity again, this time from Nestorius and his teaching that the man Jesus and the Word of God were separate, united in a personal union or a union of will), and so using this allegorical form of exegesis, I believe the Book of Genesis is an allegorical account of creation, and my view is strengthened by the fact that if we interpret all accounts of creation in every religion allegorically, the only one which corresponds to known science is the Christian account.

But at the same time, some members of my flock are creationists, and I fully respect the creationist perspective. And if asked about how the universe came to be, my answer is probably the same as theirs, “God created it from nothing.” The only disagreement is over how He created it. Many extremely pious Christian pastors and theologians who I deeply respect are also creationists, and I cannot fault someone for using the Historical-Literal form of interpretation associated with the School of Antioch (indeed, the orthodox interpretation of the Old Testament shared by most Christian churches is based on a mix or synthesis of historical-critical interpretation, of the kind favored by John Chrysostom and Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Alexandrian allegorical-typological-prophetic interpretation, favored by Origen, Athanasius, Cyril and others.

The important part of the Bible is the Gospel message, which we get from the entirety of the books in it; the Good News that we can, thanks to the atoning sacrifice of our Savior, and his victory over death on the Cross, receive the blessing of everlasting life if we believe in Him.

Really interesting stuff that there may even be Baptist congregations that are tolerant of old earth views. But I agree, bible is not so much intended to be a cookbook for creation. One thing I stand to reason with why God may have omitted the intricate workings of how he created things using genetic code is that we already see some of the unethical and wicked things that can be done with knowledge of sciences, laying on us all knowledge before we're ready for it would be disaster. If God taught the prophets about how to split atoms and how to manipulate DNA, just laying that knowledge on us without us earning it ourselves, it could cause horrible calamities. Even earning it ourselves through increasing knowledge and technology, we've created some disasters. Nuclear weapons are terrifying, now imagine if we'd had them for the last several thousand years.
We're cloning animals and they're CRISPR editing humans in China, quite literally playing God. You think he would have wanted to tell us exactly how he made us from day 1 when we've shown how irresponsible we've been with these tools of creation and destruction on our own?
I think these things were omitted for our safety.
We're not far off from creating chimera monsters, abominations of the end times. There's a lot of good that can be done with that kind of knowledge but a LOT of evil that can be done as well.

The Liturgist said:
I concede readily that it is possible the universe was set in motion in six days, in a mature state; God being omnipotent could well do this.

Oscarr said:
If we view God as anyone less, we are not viewing the God of the Bible and we are following a God whom our omniscient God doesn't know about. The God of the Bible said that He is the only God there is, and and is no other (Isaiah 45:5). So if there are any other Gods around who come short of omnipotence, He doesn't know about them.

I don't think anyone here is ever arguing about what God CAN do. Just differing opinion on what He HAS done, and differing opinion on what to them makes God seem greater. I can see arguments for both viewpoints being valid, speaking things into existence for some people makes Him seem more powerful, to me, being more detailed and intricate in creation feels more astounding to me. Sorry for saying this if it offends people but poofing things into existence instantly feels cheap to me, feels short sighted for someone with such a long and intricate plan everywhere else to have just instantaneously created things. It feels less to just have it be magic. That's a big part of why I believe the way I do, because it makes God sound more awesome to me than a magician. I can imagine a being speaking and things just poofing into existence instantly. I can't imagine someone working intricately developing such things as the laws of physics and genetic code, and every time we look deeper at particle physics we discover more and more smaller particles that we once thought were indivisible. We used to think atoms were indivisible. Nope. It's far more complex than that. It's so far beyond our own intelligence that we can't even imagine a world on that scale and then make an infinitely large universe out of it, and to top it all, to God, it probably was pretty much instantaneous, because He's outside of time to begin with. For our time scales it could have been billions of years, for Him? a blink of an eye. I can't even imagine a billion years. I can imagine an instant. God is more wonderous than I can imagine.

Jamdoc · Nov 29, 2019

Daniel9v9 said:
Just to keep things very simple and on point, my 2c is that any theory that involves death before the fall can be disregarded, as death is certainly a result of sin and not part of the created order.

Here's the thing. There are two possible viewpoints to have on this that support old earth, support science, and still hold to scripture of Adam bringing death into the world.

The first is, that Adam's sin retroactively brought all death into the world. It is possible, because God knew Adam was going to sin. It's commonly accepted that old testament saints were saved retroactively by Jesus' death and resurrection, because they placed their faith in God knowing they were promised a savior and they placed their faith in that savior even though he would not be born yet. God always knew he was going to offer His Son up to save sinners. He exists out of time, so He can do this. Otherwise everyone born before Jesus was crucified and resurrected is burning in hell. So, knowing that Adam would sin, things died, because Adam would sin and bring death into the world.

Second viewpoint is, that Adam bringing death into the world through sin only applied to humans, and not all animals, and certainly not all plants, bacteria, etc. To eat, you have to kill something unless all you're eating is milk and honey. Even eating fruit you are killing a life form. Even drinking milk, there's cells in the milk that will die from your stomach acid. A lot of references to death in the bible involve spiritual death. Adam was told if he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die (Genesis 2:17) but when he ate from the tree and committed the first sin, he didn't flop over physically dead he physically lived for hundreds of more years. But he spiritually died when he ate the fruit, he separated himself from God. We see a lot of scripture referring to death as being spiritual separation from God, not always death of the flesh.

zoidar · Nov 29, 2019

Jamdoc said:
I can't be young earth, Genesis 1 seems like a "this is a gist of it but I'm not telling you specifics" overview of creation rather than a step by step instruction, allowing for what has been scientifically discovered about the nature of the universe and its age to hold true while still being God's very good creation. I see ongoing geological, cosmological, and biological processes that take very long times to do anything and it only makes absolute sense that those processes have been going on for a very long time, canyons are still being dug by rivers inch by inch, Niagra falls recedes its bank inch by inch over the years. There have been cataclysms such as global flood but there have also been slow processes that continue to go on every day, I have witnessed microevolution in laboratory settings. So there's only so much you can do believing in young earth creationism, and not just blind yourself to everything around you that says the universe is older than 6000 years. You either have to believe that Satan created the evidence (where in scripture has Satan ever been able to create anything?), or believe that God created things to appear older than they really are which seems like, deception. Why create things that would intentionally trick people? God doesn't lie or deceive!
So I can't be a young earth creationist, which puts me at odds with most pastors in most denominations of Christianity.
I believe in Old Earth. I still believe God created it, but I believe he did so using processes we still see at work today. I am not sure if I full blown believe in theistic macroevolution or progressive creationism (God creating things according to "kinds" in waves, which is more consistent with the fossil record, and microevolution being a tool within the genetic code that God created as a blueprint for all life). But microevolution I can't ignore at all. I can't just pretend that DNA just doesn't exist and we're all just scooped up dirt breathed upon by God. In Genesis 2 God even describes anesthesia and surgery to remove one of Adam's ribs (as a source of bone marrow and stem cells) to make Eve (Genesis 2:21-23). Which had always confused me as to why Genesis 2 didn't have God just speaking Eve into existence, but then I learned about stem cells present in bone marrow and the ribs are a flat bone which is one of your main sources of hematopoiesis, it suddenly made perfect sense, God GREW Eve from stem cells from Adam's bone marrow.
Is there any denominations that support old earth and either theistic evolution or progressive creationism?

Don't most Christians today believe in old Earth?

dqhall · Nov 29, 2019

Jamdoc said:
I can't be young earth, Genesis 1 seems like a "this is a gist of it but I'm not telling you specifics" overview of creation rather than a step by step instruction, allowing for what has been scientifically discovered about the nature of the universe and its age to hold true while still being God's very good creation. I see ongoing geological, cosmological, and biological processes that take very long times to do anything and it only makes absolute sense that those processes have been going on for a very long time, canyons are still being dug by rivers inch by inch, Niagra falls recedes its bank inch by inch over the years. There have been cataclysms such as global flood but there have also been slow processes that continue to go on every day, I have witnessed microevolution in laboratory settings. So there's only so much you can do believing in young earth creationism, and not just blind yourself to everything around you that says the universe is older than 6000 years. You either have to believe that Satan created the evidence (where in scripture has Satan ever been able to create anything?), or believe that God created things to appear older than they really are which seems like, deception. Why create things that would intentionally trick people? God doesn't lie or deceive!
So I can't be a young earth creationist, which puts me at odds with most pastors in most denominations of Christianity.
I believe in Old Earth. I still believe God created it, but I believe he did so using processes we still see at work today. I am not sure if I full blown believe in theistic macroevolution or progressive creationism (God creating things according to "kinds" in waves, which is more consistent with the fossil record, and microevolution being a tool within the genetic code that God created as a blueprint for all life). But microevolution I can't ignore at all. I can't just pretend that DNA just doesn't exist and we're all just scooped up dirt breathed upon by God. In Genesis 2 God even describes anesthesia and surgery to remove one of Adam's ribs (as a source of bone marrow and stem cells) to make Eve (Genesis 2:21-23). Which had always confused me as to why Genesis 2 didn't have God just speaking Eve into existence, but then I learned about stem cells present in bone marrow and the ribs are a flat bone which is one of your main sources of hematopoiesis, it suddenly made perfect sense, God GREW Eve from stem cells from Adam's bone marrow.
Is there any denominations that support old earth and either theistic evolution or progressive creationism?

The Bible only offers a few words of theory about eons of old earth time. Even in later periods of history the Bible does not offer information about many things recorded in ancient Sumerian, Egyptian, Old Babylonian, Ugarit - NW Semitic cuneiform, Assyrian, Babylonian etc. The Bible is not an unabridged record of everything that ever happened.

Galileo lived in the 1600’s. He was accused of heresy for publishing a theory the earth orbited the sun. The popular theory was the sun went around the earth. Today people accept Galileo’s theory.

Daniel9v9 · Nov 29, 2019

Jamdoc said:
Here's the thing. There are two possible viewpoints to have on this that support old earth, support science, and still hold to scripture of Adam bringing death into the world.

The first is, that Adam's sin retroactively brought all death into the world. It is possible, because God knew Adam was going to sin. It's commonly accepted that old testament saints were saved retroactively by Jesus' death and resurrection, because they placed their faith in God knowing they were promised a savior and they placed their faith in that savior even though he would not be born yet. God always knew he was going to offer His Son up to save sinners. He exists out of time, so He can do this. Otherwise everyone born before Jesus was crucified and resurrected is burning in hell. So, knowing that Adam would sin, things died, because Adam would sin and bring death into the world.

Second viewpoint is, that Adam bringing death into the world through sin only applied to humans, and not all animals, and certainly not all plants, bacteria, etc. To eat, you have to kill something unless all you're eating is milk and honey. Even eating fruit you are killing a life form. Even drinking milk, there's cells in the milk that will die from your stomach acid. A lot of references to death in the bible involve spiritual death. Adam was told if he ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die (Genesis 2:17) but when he ate from the tree and committed the first sin, he didn't flop over physically dead he physically lived for hundreds of more years. But he spiritually died when he ate the fruit, he separated himself from God. We see a lot of scripture referring to death as being spiritual separation from God, not always death of the flesh.

First of all, Scriptures make a distinction between creatures and plants; creatures are living beings, but plants are objects for food. Scriptures do not say that a tree or a fruit is a creature. They can't be confounded.

Secondly, the fall caused spiritual and physical death. Death is not part of the created order. There was no death of living creatures before the fall, because death was non-existent. Our science cannot comprehend that, because the rules of nature before the fall was fundamentally different from what they are now that everything is prone to death and decay. We can't with our ability to reason (which is biased towards sin) force our understanding of how natural law works in our day (which is corrupt) on the original creation. Basically, it's hard for us to understand the science behind a natural order completely void of death because we have no evidence of it. Yet, a world without death is what God declared to have created, and we can take comfort in knowing that God is true and greater than our reason.

To go from suggesting that eating fruit is a kind of killing of a life form (which Scriptures do not say) to equate to the death of animals is quite a leap that Scripture does not make. Scriptures give no indication that any living creature could die before the fall, but very clearly shows us that death is the result of sin.

Aussie Pete · Nov 29, 2019

Jamdoc said:
The most important things that I get out of the Genesis 2 verses on Adam's creation is #1 that God imbued an immortal soul in us that other forms of life do not have, and #2, that God created us out of the same elements that comprise the Earth. That part is consistent with the organic chemistry on this planet, it even agrees with atheist scientists like Carl Sagan "we're all made of star stuff" all the elements that comprise us are found in the stars and in particular found in the crust of the earth, dirt as we'll usually put it. Now I don't know if I go so far as to believe in more than 1 global flood with mankind in it, there is evidence of multiple mass extinction events on the planet that predate mankind and the end of the last ice age kind of coincides with where Noah's flood may have been.
One thing is for certain. Omission from scripture does not mean it never happened. Genesis 1 is VERY short, a very very short amount of scripture for such an important thing as the creation of an entire universe. Abridged creation story is what it reads like, and there's a lot of room for omission and the more we observe in science the more things we find omitted. Is that of particular importance to God? Is it something He really wanted us to know about our origins? Probably not since they were omitted, or else we have to pretend they don't exist.

God has indeed given us all that we need to know. There was a time when scientists saw the glory of God in creation as they marvelled at God's handiwork. Now most scientists start with the assumption that there is no God. The god of this world blinds the eyes of those who are perishing.........

JohnAshton · Nov 29, 2019

Because 'six days' is not necessarily at absolute statement meaning 144 hour period as we understand time. No one here has convinced me logically of an absolutist young Earth theory, not even remotely.

Albion · Nov 29, 2019

Oscarr said:
It all depends on whether they believe in the God of the Bible, who inspired Moses to write that He created the universe as we know it, in six days.

It depends more on whether you think "day" means 12 hours and that only. It's not as though anyone involved in this eternal debate--the majority of churches or the Baptistic ones--doubts God.

AvisG · Nov 29, 2019

Oscarr said:
That's because many believe in a small God with not enough power to create a whole universe in six days and bring it to full maturity in that amount of time. But that is not the almighty and all-powerful God of the Bible.

It's ironic you would say this. One of the recurring realizations of my Christian walk has been how very, very small and anthropomorphic (i.e., manmade) the God of extreme Bible literalists is. This is true of Flat Earthers, Young Earth Christians and, indeed, almost the entire evangelical community in the U.S. These folks attempt to live their lives in a cognitively dissonant straitjacket, worshipping the little idol they have erected in their imaginations.

To the OP's question: As others have pointed out, Young Earth Creationism is a tiny minority position, is "required" for belief only among the far fringe of evangelical Christianity, and is certainly not an essential of the faith. I was with Campus Crusade, attended a Southern Baptist seminary, and for many years attended Southern Baptist churches. In that time, I heard precisely one person (a Campus Crusade staff member) assert the Young Earth position. Even though I was then a newbie, my jaw dropped. The notion that Young Earth Creationism is some sort of Christian essential is a very recent phenomenon.

It is my position that no one actually believes Young Earth Creationism any more than they believe the Earth is flat. These are "pretend beliefs" that people spout because they are under the mistaken impression that at least pretending to believe them is essential to being a "real" Christian.

The Barbarian · Nov 29, 2019

joshua 1 9 said:
Swing and a miss, nice try though. The mysteries of God are contained within the literal scriptures. So we believe with the faith of a child until we have the understanding to comprehend the deeper things of God. Adam and Eve were real people that lived around 6,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia in the Tigris Euphrates river valley.

That is man's addition to God's word, which does not say that.

Noah and his family were real people and his flood was a very real flood.

Could have been. There was a great flood in the Middle East, about the right time. Bottom line, we don't know for sure, and no one can demonstrate for sure whether it was an actual event or an allegory.

Rick Otto · Nov 29, 2019

JohnAshton said:
The following is one poster's personal opinion, nothing more: "Theistic evolution is heretical, regardless of the view of the churches of Christ under heaven. It is inconsistent with the gospel."

I disagree in that I believe in a theistic-Old Earth creation, which is my own attempt to understand this issue.

Saying that it's "one poster's personal opinion" (which I share) reads like a defensive reflexive attempt to marginalize the truth in it.

If you are willing to remain ignorant of articulate contrary opinions, you're necessarily going to need to look beyond literature that 'The World' approves of.
When you're ready to make that journey you may find people along the way who are willing to help.
I wish you well either way.

Rick Otto · Nov 29, 2019

AvisG said:
It's ironic you would say this. One of the recurring realizations of my Christian walk has been how very, very small and anthropomorphic (i.e., manmade) the God of extreme Bible literalists is. This is true of Flat Earthers, Young Earth Christians and, indeed, almost the entire evangelical community in the U.S. These folks attempt to live their lives in a cognitively dissonant straitjacket, worshipping the little idol they have erected in their imaginations.

To the OP's question: As others have pointed out, Young Earth Creationism is a tiny minority position, is "required" for belief only among the far fringe of evangelical Christianity, and is certainly not an essential of the faith. I was with Campus Crusade, attended a Southern Baptist seminary, and for many years attended Southern Baptist churches. In that time, I heard precisely one person (a Campus Crusade staff member) assert the Young Earth position. Even though I was then a newbie, my jaw dropped. The notion that Young Earth Creationism is some sort of Christian essential is a very recent phenomenon.

It is my position that no one actually believes Young Earth Creationism any more than they believe the Earth is flat. These are "pretend beliefs" that people spout because they are under the mistaken impression that at least pretending to believe them is essential to being a "real" Christian.

LOL,... with all due respect... Naaahhhhhh!
I mean, I know exactly those people you are talking about, phony or just confused "church" attenders blinded by idolatry. Yikes! They are legion!
But even back when I couldn't believe YEC, I kinda hated myself for it. It felt like "just going along" with a crowd I really didn't like as much as God anyway (knowing how much I try to keep HIM out of way)
So if you're not afraid of the ostracism you will face for it, I encourage you to look at information the world tries to hide, discredit, and marginalize.
You might fond out the world has been lying to you like scripture says it does.

Rick Otto · Nov 29, 2019

The Barbarian said:
That is man's addition to God's word, which does not say that.

Could have been. There was a great flood in the Middle East, about the right time. Bottom line, we don't know for sure, and no one can demonstrate for sure whether it was an actual event or an allegory.

Interesting. In one breath you judge God's word and then confess you don't really know.

Rick Otto · Nov 29, 2019

Jonaitis said:
If he says six days, why would you disregard that detail? It is clearly written right there.

The reason I used to not disregard, but conveniently de-literalize the time frame was because of heavy indoctrination enforced by peer pressure in concert with the enemy's efforts to hide the truth.
I got over and past all that, though. It may sound corny, but we actually do have a friend in Jesus.

Rick Otto · Nov 29, 2019

Basil the Great said:
Your post is a most interesting one. However, it seems to me that any God who has the power to create and sustain the Universe is a big God, regardless of how long that He chose to take to finish his creative work.

I find yours most interesting as well.
Size is only relevant in a material sense, what it identifies is essential only from inside creation.
Eternity is only 'observable' (experienced) in spirit.

Jamdoc · Nov 29, 2019

zoidar said:
Don't most Christians today believe in old Earth?

Just read the thread, it's a very divisive issue and at least the most vocal Christians are young earth.

Albion · Nov 29, 2019

Jamdoc said:
...it's a very divisive issue and at least the most vocal Christians are young earth.

That last part is probably correct to say. Most Christian churches have long since accepted theistic evolution, so the issue is almost never discussed in church meetings or in sermons.

Jamdoc · Nov 29, 2019

Daniel9v9 said:
First of all, Scriptures make a distinction between creatures and plants; creatures are living beings, but plants are objects for food. Scriptures do not say that a tree or a fruit is a creature. They can't be confounded.

Secondly, the fall caused spiritual and physical death. Death is not part of the created order. There was no death of living creatures before the fall, because death was non-existent. Our science cannot comprehend that, because the rules of nature before the fall was fundamentally different from what they are now that everything is prone to death and decay. We can't with our ability to reason (which is biased towards sin) force our understanding of how natural law works in our day (which is corrupt) on the original creation. Basically, it's hard for us to understand the science behind a natural order completely void of death because we have no evidence of it. Yet, a world without death is what God declared to have created, and we can take comfort in knowing that God is true and greater than our reason.

To go from suggesting that eating fruit is a kind of killing of a life form (which Scriptures do not say) to equate to the death of animals is quite a leap that Scripture does not make. Scriptures give no indication that any living creature could die before the fall, but very clearly shows us that death is the result of sin.

First, life is life, you eat something, it has to die for you to absorb the nutrients to sustain yourself. Second, Genesis at least does not make mention as to whether or not animals died before Adam sinned. The only thing specific is that Adam brought death unto himself and his seed. Where the bible omits things that we have questions about (and Genesis is very short, very basic, a lot of fastforward and begats, a lot omitted), you have to look to God's creation itself and try to piece together the best answers you can.
There are a lot of forms of life, and remember, man was created last, so these life forms were created before men, that are carnivores, parasites, carrion feeders, and things like fungus and bacteria that break down and decay dead things. Humans didn't die before sin, that part is NOT omitted from Genesis. But animal death is not clearly stated one way or the other, so animals dying and feeding on each other can still be a part of the plan, and is absolutely necessary for population control in a balanced ecosystem. God said "be fruitful and multiply". The world would be absolutely overrun if you had insects breeding but never dying. Some species entire reproductive strategies involve reproducing by the hundreds or more, anticipating most of the young will die but a few will survive to breed in the future. In biology we call this the R strategy, reproduce frequently in high numbers hoping that some survive but with minimal investment in each one. The adults tend to have short lifespans as well, so it's necessary (and designed this way) for them to reproduce a lot to keep their numbers up.
Humans are what biologists call k strategists, few offspring, HIGH investment in each one, longer lifespan (or in humans case originally intended to be immortal)
God creating things that breed literally more frequently and in higher numbers but rabbits but never die, this planet is too small for that. Note that when we're reborn in new creation, there won't be marriage anymore, and by extension, no sex or children, so the population control won't be a factor, at least not for humans. Again, revelations isn't very clear about animals, that's mostly omitted. There's some stuff pertaining to Christ's 1000 year rule before creation is remade, with the wolf and the lamb lying down next to each other to suggest there won't be predator and prey relationships anymore. But that's about it.

Is there a denomination that accepts theistic evolution/old earth?

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