Reconciling Evolution with the Bible

[Fish and Bread]

Fish and Bread, despite all your many words you did not say anything.

I think I said a great deal.

God could certainly create a world in which evolution occurs.
But He did not.

Yes, he did.

He created this world in 6 days, as the Bible says.

If you understand Hebrew, which the book of Genesis was written in, you'd know that, to start with, the word translated in most English bibles as "day" can also mean "era" or "epoch" in Hebrew. It's just a division of time. But I'm not going to get too far into arguing literal meaning from a book that was written by people who did not intend for it to be taken literally and which then-contemporary readers, for the most part, did not take literally. This hyperliteralism is part of a culture other than in which Genesis was first written, read, and understood.

There is no evidence of transitional fossils.

Yes, there is. There's overwhelming evidence. Put down the creationist propaganda and see if you can sign up to audit a biology class on evolution at a regular religiously neutral college. Read the text book and the journal articles. See the evidence that scientists see. What you're getting is propoganda from people who are out of step with the overwhelming majority of scientists and, frankly, objective reality.

Mutations, as I said, only degrade preexisting information. You do not seem to understand this fact.. degrading information does not result in improved information, no matter how long the time scale.

What you don't seem to understand that is that mutations can only universally be seen as degradations of information if one presupposes that the original form that is being mutated from is the one true genome and that any changes are bad. You're taking a bias that these parlor trick loving snakeoil salespeople are trying to get you to buy into and just taking it as truth because it seems like common sense instead of examining the false core assumption on which all of their "logic" is built. My dog isn't a degraded wolf, he's a dog- and far better for my purposes than having a wolf, who would probably periodically try to attack me or something (Though wolves are beautiful in their own way).

We let the Bible interpret the Bible

Uh-huh. A lot of religious traditions do not agree with that theological statement. Things need to be understood in a historical context that is rightly going to mostly be absent from a holy book because it'd be dead weight and detract from the purpose of the book (A scripture generally isn't going to explain how readers would read it in the time it's written- readers would know how to read it and the author would assume that and write for that audience). But even let's say we "let the bible interpret the bible"- where does it say that the story of creation in Genesis is literal history? You want to be hyperliteral, so don't quote me something that does not literally say that we need to interpret the story of creation literally- someone using it to teach a moral lesson later is not the equivalent of someone saying it is literal.

Since you say that you are influenced by ancient traditions

Influenced, but not ruled.

I believe in reality first and foremost. Science shows us the literal side of God's creation. Scripture is the poetic side.

The earth was created and had plants living on it before the sun and the stars were created.

I can't believe I'm even participating in this conversation, but.... Where did the plants get their light to live and grow and reproduce if there was no sun and there were no stars?

 

[TaylorDonBarrett]

Scripture is poetic, and not historical?

Was the resurrection of Christ poetic or historical?

What does modern science say about the resurrection of Christ?

Tell me, have scientists proven that Christ could not have walked on water and brought the dead to life?

Which is harder: growing plants without the sun, or creating the entire universe out of nothing?

If God can create the universe, and rise from the dead... why can't He create the planet in the exact manner in which He said He did?


You keep looking to the secular world for your information, then you will never understand the bible.

Yes, I look to Creationists, people who believe in God's word and start their research from the point of view that God is not a liar, when I want to study science. Why would I look to evolutionists who start with the point of view that the bible is false?

I spend 24 years believing, studying, and teaching evolutionary science.

Now I know better.

 

[Fish and Bread]

Scripture is poetic, and not historical?
Was the resurrection of Christ poetic or historical?

What does modern science say about the resurrection of Christ?

Tell me, have scientists proven that Christ could not have walked on water and brought the dead to life?

Which is harder: growing plants without the sun, or creating the entire universe out of nothing?

If God can create the universe, and rise from the dead... why can't He create the planet in the exact manner in which He said He did?

You keep looking to the secular world for your information, then you will never understand the bible.

Yes, I look to Creationists, people who believe in God's word and start their research from the point of view that God is not a liar, when I want to study science. Why would I look to evolutionists who start with the point of view that the bible is false?

I spend 24 years believing, studying, and teaching evolutionary science.

Now I know better.

The problem here is that you seem to not want to see nuance. For you, the bible is either poetic *or* historical. It couldn't be a little of each, could it? You seem to think the world is either a purely magical place where facts and reason don't apply to anything, or a place where only facts and reason apply and nothing breaks the rules. Maybe it's a little of all of those things. Perhaps the story of creation in Genesis is a poetic morality fable but the story of the resurrection in the New Testament is based on historical fact. Maybe we can have evolution and God.

All I know is that when people start asking me to deny objective reality and stop looking at what God created in order to know God, that they are spreading false teaching. We know God in part through his creation- by studying it, the way scientists do. And scientists looked at the world and figured out how God made us- through a process of evolution. Evolution is a fact and anyone who teaches about a God who wants to force us to disbelieve that reality is not teaching about the real God.

I think maybe you need to go back and read some of the textbooks you taught from again.

 

[SistrNChrist]

I think the problem here is that some people are attempting to make the Genesis accounts into a science textbook, when the Bible was never intended to be one in the first place. The basic premise of the book, starting in Genesis and going all through Revelation, is God's sovereign plan for humanity, so let's not make it into a textbook when it was never written as one in the first place.

 

[lesliedellow]

I think the problem here is that some people are attempting to make the Genesis accounts into a science textbook, when the Bible was never intended to be one in the first place. The basic premise of the book, starting in Genesis and going all through Revelation, is God's sovereign plan for humanity, so let's not make it into a textbook when it was never written as one in the first place.

Hear, hear.

 

[Martinius]

It is not necessary to "reconcile" evolution with the Bible, unless one thinks that the stories of creation in Genesis are a factual and scientific narrative of actual events. In that case it is impossible to reconcile them. For those that understand the meaning and purpose of the creation stories there is no issue with evolution, as others have said in recent posts.

 

[RedPonyDriver]

If one does not understand the various literary genres used in writing the collection of 66 books we now call the bible, there's no way to have an intelligent discussion. Every culture has a creation myth. The beginning of Genesis was and is the way the ancient Israelites explained how they came to be on the earth, how they explained how evil came into the world.

I can buy that God had something to do with the creation of the universe. I can even buy that at some point in prehistory, God infused primitive man with a soul, however, the whole idea of 6 days, 6000 years ago makes absolutely NO sense at all.

Its another one of those stumbling blocks to faith that is put in front of people...that insistence that one MUST believe in a literal 6 day creation in order to be a "good Christian"...if I remember my bible correctly, that's not one of the requirements.

 

[xpower]

http://www.evolutionnews.org/intelligent_design/

 

[RedPonyDriver]

The bible, especially the Old Testament was written using many different literary genres. Genesis 1 & 2 are creation MYTHS...attempts by an ancient people to explain how they came to be in the world and an attempt to explain how sin and evil entered the world. Every culture has a creation myth. To attempt to take a literal 6 day creation, 6000 years ago, as literal, historical and scientific truth is an exercise in futility. There is no good reason to be required to take it literally to be a Christian.

Personally, I believe that God set the universe into motion. I believe that He triggered the big bang and the universe has unfurled over the last 14+ billion years. The evidence from paleontology, geology, and astronomy (specifically the Hubble Telescope) is too much to ignore. There's no way to reconcile that scientific evidence with the creationist belief. There are those who will say that those evidences are put there by God to "trick" us...umm...that makes NO sense at all to me.

In the bible, there is one requirement to be a Christian...to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, his atoning death for sin and his resurrection. That's it. The rest is optional.