One big problem with evolution I see

[lucaspa]

rmills, this may help you get a handle on other Christian perspectives.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_bibl.htm

Notice the congruence between Genesis 1 and the Enuma Elish in the order of creation. What the website doesn't tell you is that most of the entities created -- sun, moon, plants, etc -- in the Enuma Elish are gods of the Babylonian pantheon. What Genesis 1 is doing is going thru that pantheon and demolishing those gods by making each entity -- sun, moon, plants, etc -- be created objects. Created by Yahweh. They can't be gods if they are created by Yahweh! So, while you insist on imposing your reading on Genesis 1, to the people of the day, Genesis 1 is expressing a fundamental truth to the Hebrews: there are no other gods but Yahweh.

 

[rmills]

I was reading the text literally. Just like you tell me to do.

? I believe that I allready pointed out the simple explanation for what you call the contradiction, (BTW, the contradiction with which the whole Theistic Evolutionists can now swing the doors open to a whole world of man's brilliant explanations) and am now playing chase the tail with one who believes that genetic minipulation proves evolution.

...bibliolatry.

A Christian's belief is not founded in the Bible. .

So that I may better understand, who do you say that Jesus is? Who do you say that God is? With that answer in mind, how does one come to know these things without the Bible?

...(Space for 20 mile answer)...

Oh so you do use the Bible to come to these conclusions but you still contend that the Bible contradicts itself! Now I see!

Let me try again. Paitence with me because I am slow at this. The Biblical account of the Creation is false, we know this because of the secret hidden texts found in Author: B.A. Robinson's neato discovery, those that believe the Biblical account of creation are believing in a false interpretation of God.

Well now I am fixed!

Rom 1:20 For the unseen things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things made, both His eternal power and Godhead, for them to be without excuse.
Rom 1:21 Because knowing God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful. But they became vain in their reasonings, and their undiscerning heart was darkened.
Rom 1:22 Professing to be wise, they became foolish
Rom 1:23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into a likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things.
Rom 1:24 Because of this, God gave them up to impurity in the lusts of their hearts, their bodies to be dishonored among themselves,
Rom 1:25 who changed the truth of God into the lie, and worshiped and served the created thing more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Once again, take from it what you wish, beleive it or not cuz of course this was only written by a man.

 

[Curt]

Scripture. First, of course, the account in Genesis 1-3. But those who want to believe in evolution have found a way to wave this away already I've found.

Then Jesus' words: (repeated in Matthew 19:4. "at the beginning")
Mark 10:6 "But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female." -- certainly Sounds to me more like a literal creation at the beginning of the world rather than something that we are still in the middle of the changing of it.

The explanation for the Sabbath day. Exodus 20:8-11
" 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it."

Hebrews 11:3 seems to even point to today's conflict over evolution -- This is first, before even Abel in the "faith" chapter. "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."

Romans 5:12-21 (the idea of which is repeated in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22,45-47)
"12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:"

" 19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." (One man sinning. Not a culture or anything else like that)

For evolution to exist, things had to have been dying for however long, even before there was man. Even before there was a man to sin.

And yet, this verse tells us that death entered the world WITH sin. So there couldn't have been death before sin and the Bible be true. And yet evolution requires death.

For those who are accepting that the scientists know more than Bible (or that the Bible is inaccurate in Genesis) How do you explain away these other references? What caused the first sin that Jesus had to come to redeem us from? Why do we need salvation at all if death has been in the world since the beginning of time and God is just "guiding" as the big bang turned into protoplasm turned into basic lifeforms, etc?

Yes, yes, yes, and Amen.
Keep up that good preaching. God loves it.

 

[Curt]

rmills, this may help you get a handle on other Christian perspectives.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_bibl.htm

Notice the congruence between Genesis 1 and the Enuma Elish in the order of creation. What the website doesn't tell you is that most of the entities created -- sun, moon, plants, etc -- in the Enuma Elish are gods of the Babylonian pantheon. What Genesis 1 is doing is going thru that pantheon and demolishing those gods by making each entity -- sun, moon, plants, etc -- be created objects. Created by Yahweh. They can't be gods if they are created by Yahweh! So, while you insist on imposing your reading on Genesis 1, to the people of the day, Genesis 1 is expressing a fundamental truth to the Hebrews: there are no other gods but Yahweh.

Talk about once more around the mulberry bush. God wrote in Genesis that He created everything that is in 6 days, by speaking them into existance. And you would have us believe that before God started creating anything that a Babylonian pantheon existed. I think you had best go back to wherver you came from and see if you can't get off to a better start. You will never be able to peddle that stuff around the True circumcised in the heart believers that trust in God, and what He has written to us. Inspired by His Holy Spirit, our only God appointed teacher. Those 6 days of God's creation are explained very definitely to us in The sabaath rest laws, that likens mans 6 days of work, 7th day rest to His 6 days of work and 7th day rest. So you might just as well hang it up trying to change God.

 

[rmills]

Talk about once more around the mulberry bush. God wrote in Genesis that He created everything that is in 6 days, by speaking them into existance. And you would have us believe that before God started creating anything that a Babylonian pantheon existed. I think you had best go back to wherver you came from and see if you can't get off to a better start. You will never be able to peddle that stuff around the True circumcised in the heart believers that trust in God, and what He has written to us. Inspired by His Holy Spirit, our only God appointed teacher. Those 6 days of God's creation are explained very definitely to us in The sabaath rest laws, that likens mans 6 days of work, 7th day rest to His 6 days of work and 7th day rest. So you might just as well hang it up trying to change God.

Curt,

I was beginning to think that I was the only lunatic around here!

I see a problem here with Lucaspa's Theology that clearly defines the core of his Theistic Evolutionary beliefs. He has in fact decided that what we refer to as the Word of God is something different from what you and I believe it to be. I have encountered this mentality before, and it states that there are two basic parts to the Bible aside from Old Testament and New Testament. There is the text and there is The Word of God. What this amounts to is the belief that anything written by man is text, and statements from either Jesus or God are scripture or THE words of God. When you start with this simple conclusion that there is little to no merit to what was contributed by man, you have opened the door for countless heretic directions. I therefore have come to the conclusion that a belief in theistic evolution equates to a categorical cultic belief fully embracing every element of the definition.

The sequence of events for supporting Theistic Evolution starts with an attempt to discredit the word of God. Once anybody has done that, you can manipulate it to mean whatever you want it to mean.

 

[Silent Enigma]

Rmills, so you are saying that people who accept TE are willing to play fast and loose with the rest of the bible?

 

[rmills]

Rmills, so you are saying that people who accept TE are willing to play fast and loose with the rest of the bible?

I am saying that folks who accept TE are using scripture to no avail. The fact that they point out suposed contradictions in scripture says that they do not accept the Bible as a whole truth. Logic would state that if the source is known to provide false or contradictory information, the source is unreliable, period. This is proven by the fact that various TEs only accept portions of the Bible as the Word Of God!

Sorry, I am a little shocked at some of the statements that I read in this forum from people who claim the name of Jesus Christ.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Talk about once more around the mulberry bush. God wrote in Genesis that He created everything that is in 6 days, by speaking them into existance. And you would have us believe that before God started creating anything that a Babylonian pantheon existed.

Good grief!

Rarely have I seen such a willful misreading of what someone has said.

Of course, lucaspa doesn't believe a Babylonian pantheon either before creation or ever. Sheesh.

The point is, rather, that the author of the text wrote deliberately to establish for his readers that there is no God but Yahweh. He did so by co-opting the Babylonian story and giving God credit for each of the supposed gods of Babylon.

Are you obtuse or willfully misrepresenting what lucaspa said?

I think you had best go back to wherver you came from and see if you can't get off to a better start.

Condescend much?

You will never be able to peddle that stuff around the True circumcised in the heart believers that trust in God, and what He has written to us.

Ye Olde "No True Scotsman" fallacy.

And, as has been said many times before, what about what God has written to us in his creation?

Inspired by His Holy Spirit, our only God appointed teacher. Those 6 days of God's creation are explained very definitely to us in The sabaath rest laws, that likens mans 6 days of work, 7th day rest to His 6 days of work and 7th day rest. So you might just as well hang it up trying to change God.

No one is trying to change God, only the perfidiousness of a literalness that warps one's view of God.

Tinker

 

[lucaspa]

Talk about once more around the mulberry bush. God wrote in Genesis that He created everything that is in 6 days,

1.God didn't "write" the Bible. People did. Even 2Tim 3:16 only says God inspired scripture. You are going way beyond what scripture says about itself. by speaking them into existance.
2. And then scripture turns around in Genesis 2:4b and says God created the heavens and the earth is a single day -- "beyom" in Hebrew. So which is it? Six days or one day?

And you would have us believe that before God started creating anything that a Babylonian pantheon existed.

How did you get this? Listen carefully, please:
Before Genesis 1 was written, the Enuma Elish and the Babylonian religion existed. Genesis 1 is meant to convey certain theological messages: there is only 1 god, that god is Yahweh of the Hebrews, Yahweh created the entire universe, and the Babylonian gods do not exist.

So, how to convey these messages so that people understand them? The people of the time, not 21st century Biblical literalists. What Genesis 1 does is have God create in the sequence of the Enuma Elish so that everyone knows the Babylonian gods do not exist, because each "god" in is associated with a physical object -- sweetwater, saltwater, earth (as in the ground), plants, sun, moon, stars, etc. -- and God creates each physical object! Well, if God creates the physical object, that means that the object is not a god, doesn't it? It's a way to say that the Babylonian pantheon does not exist. And a very effective one.

I think you had best go back to wherver you came from and see if you can't get off to a better start. You will never be able to peddle that stuff around the True circumcised in the heart believers that trust in God, and what He has written to us.

Since I'm not "peddling" what you say, that's not a problem. However, it would help if the self-proclaimed "True circumcised" would read better. Please try. It will help discussion if you read what I really write and not something you invent.

Inspired by His Holy Spirit, our only God appointed teacher. Those 6 days of God's creation are explained very definitely to us in The sabaath rest laws, that likens mans 6 days of work, 7th day rest to His 6 days of work and 7th day rest.

Yes, the 6 days are definitely tied to the Sabbath. Deliberately by the human authors. Remember, for the Hebrews, Exodus came first. That is, they already knew God as Creator because God had created Israel long before Genesis 1 was written. Genesis 1 is taking what they already knew about God and extrapolating that to having God create the universe. Now, God had commanded the Sabbath. That God commanded it should have been enough for humans. However, it wasn't. They needed a justification for the command. So they constructed Genesis 1 to be in 6 days so that God rests on the 7th and get a totally unnecessary justification for the Sabbath. The Sabbath is to be kept because God commands it, not because God created in 6 days! The Pentateuch was put together by an editor from several sources. When the editor did that, he inserted Exodus 20:11 and a similar verse in Leviticus to bring the human reasoning full circle. That is, he made sure the human justification got inserted into the Ten Commandments.

 

[lucaspa]

Good grief!

Rarely have I seen such a willful misreading of what someone has said.

Of course, lucaspa doesn't believe a Babylonian pantheon either before creation or ever. Sheesh.

The point is, rather, that the author of the text wrote deliberately to establish for his readers that there is no God but Yahweh. He did so by co-opting the Babylonian story and giving God credit for each of the supposed gods of Babylon.

Are you obtuse or willfully misrepresenting what lucaspa said?

Thanks for the defense, Tinker. It's nice to know I was actually clear in what I said.

 

[Tinker Grey]

You were. You're welcome.

Tinker

 

[lucaspa]

I see a problem here with Lucaspa's Theology that clearly defines the core of his Theistic Evolutionary beliefs. He has in fact decided that what we refer to as the Word of God is something different from what you and I believe it to be. I have encountered this mentality before, and it states that there are two basic parts to the Bible aside from Old Testament and New Testament. There is the text and there is The Word of God.

WOW. Another total misrepresentation of what I have been saying.

Yes, I do believe that what you refer to as "the Word of God is something different" from what I believe. You believe that your literal interpretation is a god. You also believe that the Bible is the only Word of God. You ignore 2,000 years of Christian thinking and that God really created. What I am saying, along with St. Augustine, John Calvin, Francis Bacon, and countless others, is that there are two books of God or two "Words of God". The Bible and Creation. You deny Creation as being from God.

What this amounts to is the belief that anything written by man is text, and statements from either Jesus or God are scripture or THE words of God.

No. For the simple reason that Genesis 1 contains supposed direct quotes from God. However, I do tend to give more authority to the teachings of Jesus tan I do to the letters of Paul or anyone else. You don't?

When you start with this simple conclusion that there is little to no merit to what was contributed by man, you have opened the door for countless heretic directions.

Well, since I don't do that, we don't have a problem. What I am saying is
1. That a literal interpretation is also man-made and therefore fallible.
2. When God's Creation contradicts a literal interpretation of the Bible, then we know the literal interpretation is wrong. In this I am following orthodox Christianity. Christianity has changed interpretations in the past based on knowledge gained from God's Creation. The two most famous are the interpretations of the verses indicating a flat earth and an immovable earth. We decided our interpretation was wrong.
3. The evidence from God's Creation and the literal text is clear that Genesis 1-3 should not be read literally. There are other interpretations that are much closer to the intention of God.

I therefore have come to the conclusion that a belief in theistic evolution equates to a categorical cultic belief fully embracing every element of the definition.

In terms of the false idol worship of Biblical literalism, this may be true. However, in terms of worshipping God, it is false.