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It's an implicit blasphemy to claim that an omnipotent Creator has to "design." That's a prechristian concept, not a Christian one.
We know what life is, in biological terms, and if any organism that doesn't make its own food, depends on the death of other things. God surely knows this.
Biblical death is called nephesh chayyāh (נפש חיה) and it only refers to the death of the soul- animals and humans. Plants do not have soul and did not count as death.
I was meaning your charge of blasphemy considering all the verses in the Bible that expressly contradict that He does not design and plan to the minutest detail.
And considering that :
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
What does "prechristian" even mean?
Hi there,
So of course the natural reaction is "you have faith: good for you". But I think it goes more deeply than that. I think having a God, at the very least, means that I have something for Evolutionists could believe, if only I knew what. I know the theory: call that which was not, as if it were - but does this mean call the Evolution of God (which was not), as though it - the Evolution of God - were? It seems that they are juxtaposed against each other: God does not send an updated Jesus, every time Evolution reboots with a different species! The one sacrifice was needed, that was all.
I mean if you really tried to be different, if you really looked up to Evolutionists, you still could never do it. You would always have the one sacrifice of Jesus, for all the species. It just doesn't make sense. I can't make it make sense. And for that I am told "go read 'Evolution for dummies'". As if somehow you can't explain it simple terms, if you wanted to. I have tried all the angles: is it a law? is it contingent? is it comparable? I just seem to get nowhere. You wouldn't think they expected to learn anything from it, themselves - the way they treat you as if you are the last person on earth to question what 'Evolution' means?
I will tell you something funny; just as I was typing this, a fly crept on to my screen. Rather than shoo the fly away, I circled it with my mouse cursor. At first the fly ignored it, then it started to move a little (and I kept circling it), then it discovered I was trapping it with the mouse cursor and it moved quickly to the text on the screen, where it thought it would be safe,, and I just waited, going left and right with the mouse cursor, when all of a sudden, the fly was put out, that it couldn't escape the mouse cursor - and why? because it was a fly! I was treating the fly as something that was foreign to the computer screen (using the mouse cursor) - so the fly flew! Could that have happened without design? A fly can't understand a computer, there's just no way - but a fly can react to a computer, because a computer's design is not superior, to that of a fly.
And that basically is the point, no part of Creation is subject to any other part. A supercomputer is never going to be smarter than a man, in as much as a man is simply smarter than other men. The man will always react to the computer, no matter how smart the computer gets. The same is true of Evolution. I am never going to be able to understand Evolution, as long as it keeps being a question of greater and greater connectivity; but I am always going to be able to react to it. In reacting, is humility; in humility, is justice. Whatever you want to say about Evolution, it should start from there?
Trying to think, not react.
Thanks.
I dont fully believe in evolution but I do see it as reputable. I do believe it more than the “literal 6 day” creation which i find is a horrible and shameful belief that certain christians state based on their lack of and disinterest in knowledge.
The thing with evolution to me is that it details God more as the great designer. What the bigger question is how can you not believe in a creator if you reject evolution (because of bad theology)? The brilliance in how species evolve to adapt to changing environments so that life can continue, with animals all having a similar construction... its all too brilliant and just makes God more real than a “6 day creation”.
Some IDers consider God's "designing" to be "front loading" where God instantaneously created from nothing, a universe in which all things would unfold as He intended.
"Which brings us back to where we began. Denton is not a creationist. He is not even an ID proponent, if ID is defined in a narrowly interventionist way. He firmly believes in the tree of life and common descent. If Denton does not believe the “types” arose though Darwinian processes and he does not believe they arose through interventionist acts of a designer, what does he believe? He believes the types were “prefigured into the order of things from the beginning.” From this I surmise he is a front-loading ID proponent."
Arrington's review of Denton, by chapter | Uncommon Descent
Most IDers cannot bring themselves to believe in a God wise enough and powerful enough to do this:
Though Steve doesn’t say this, if he’s right, it’s not at all obvious that this front-loading scenario is so much as possible. The only thing God would have to hardwire information at the beginning would be initial conditions, some proto-matter and the repetitive, law-like forces that govern the matter. But we can see the effects of both those initial conditions and the law-like regularities playing out in the material world now. They constitute the background to the information in biological systems–that is, the necessary but nowhere nearly sufficient background–the contrast medium for the information. What would it mean to tweak the expressions of gravity and electromagnetism so that they would give rise to the information-processing in cells and body plans of vertebrates?
...
Third, even if it’s possible for God to frontload things in this way, it hardly follows that this is a better explanation than the one Steve proposes
Intelligent Design, Front-Loading, and Theistic Evolution | Evolution News
As discussed here before, this grossly undervalues God's creative power. St. Thomas Aquinas noted that an omnipotent God can use contingency just as easily as He can use necessity to effect His will.
Actually, pre-Abraham. The beliefs of people in the Middle East were about limited gods and goddesses who were neither omnipotent or omniscient, and were unable to created a universe that would unfold as they desired.
Every post you’ve made shows you are ignorant about many things.
you are making Christianity (and God) to be a sillier tale of fiction than those older religions.
Most of the BC gods did not create the world at will,
a good majority of them created the world through war, sex, and whatever.
A creation that has an intelligent intent in where functions, systems, and everything else planned is a design.
This is not a “pre-christian” argument.
But what you are missing is the difference between creation and design. The creation stories we have about those myths is what you call creation only. Its just the world came to existence with out thought. Nothing was assigned or appointed. It just happened unintelligently due to the power of these gods.That's what I just showed you.
no there is a difference between the meaning of create and design. Create is simply putting into existence.. design is when a creation becomes or has things that are appointed to or assigned. In other words there is functionality.No. God's creation is not a bigger version of what we do. Limited creatures design; God creates. There is a difference in kind between the creation of God and the designs of men. He's not just bigger and smarter, He's the Creator.
Pre-Abraham. People could only envision gods as mightier versions of themselves, doing things as they did, only bigger. God showed Abraham something quite different. Creation isn't just design scaled up. It's something entirely above design.
They are a minority. Its not about doubting the power of God but recognizing that he is thee mastermind. The universe shows his way of creation is all intelligent and not some wizard like stuff as to what you baselessly imply.
Not only is the universe fine tune but it is readable. There is a language that is read by us as numbers (math) and through this we can see how the universe functions and we can utilize it to create/design our own stuff.
So its highly hard to believe that God is a wizard like deity that just poofs it all like Akazukin Cha Cha
when the universe shows it is engineered.
Your sources are not good
and also meaningless because whether or not they believe that God made things in a progressive way as St Augustine theorized, but it doesn't eliminate the fact that evolution is more of evidence of this world being a design and not an accident.
But what you are missing is knowing the difference between creation and design. The creation stories we have about those myths is what you call creation only.
What you dont realize is that you’ve dumbed down the Christian God to be just like that with a mix of Gandolf.
Yes, he is another category he is the mastermind.No, "wizard stuff" would be again, limited creature things. God is another category entirely.
Design is not a limitation or a show of a lack of (super)powers it is simply showing him off as intelligent. Design is simply creating something that functions, in where elements are all appointed to. Its creation done intelligently.Because we cannot truly create. We have to figure things out, and design.
Yes, he put everything in existence that is the definition of creation but we also see that he assigned and appointed things in creation to work systematically.That's what pre-Abrahamic religions thought. But God is not merely greater; He created everything. The universe in which we live might have been made ex nihilo. But scripture itself points out that He created many things using the universe he had made instantaneously.
Why is it a bad assumption? How are we able to read the universe through mathematics, do you think we just imagined these numbers and formulas out of thin air and just happen to be right? No. These numbers show the accessibility of the creation hence proving the creation is an engineered type. Again, we go back to the church and their reasoning for looking through telescopes and even doing mathematics to understand what is going on up there.That's a bad assumption. It looks created, not engineered. As engineers have come to realize, the processes of the universe are more efficient than design. That's what genetic algorithms do. For very complex problems, engineers are finding that processes from His creation work better than design.
Neither design nor accident, but creation. And neo-Platonism never really made much sense to me. The world is knowable, and logical because that is the kind of world in which we can live. That wasn't something God figured out. It was merely His will. And God being eternal, so was His intent.
The universe itself is already proof that it wasn’t just put to existence just look at water cycle, how sea turtles know where to lay eggs and where to go after they hatch, how your own cells work.
Edit: i just realized you are catholic. Read up on st augustine
Sorry for being a bit hot headed in my earlier replies. I edited it out to be more respectful..
Why is it a bad assumption? How are we able to read the universe through mathematics, do you think we just imagined these numbers and formulas out of thin air and just happen to be right? No. These numbers show the accessibility of the creation hence proving the creation is an engineered type. Again, we go back to the church and their reasoning for looking through telescopes and even doing mathematics to understand what is going on up there.
I don't think his capability is being questioned. But the evidence is based on not just how systematic the universe operates but it being accessible.And you suppose God wasn't capable of creating something like this without giving the problem some consideration? He's eternal. Never has to do that.
St. Augustine saw creation as happening instantaneously, with all things, including "beasts" developing from potentialities within the original creation.
But I don't see anything Augustine wrote that would promote a Blakean God of the Calipers, studiously designing what He could not create instantly.
I can't see God going over the details and building a design as He looks over the plan, realizing that in order for matter to exist, He's going to have to set a higher value for the speed of light.
Engineers take what they find in nature and make things from it. Which is entirely different than creating nature.
We know what life is, in biological terms, and if any organism that doesn't make its own food, depends on the death of other things. God surely knows this.
So then, if it's not a biological death, what is it? The text tells you what it is. God says to Adam that he will die the day he eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam eats, but lives on biologically for many years thereafter. But what does happen is Adam dies a spiritual death that day, suddenly fearing God, aware of good and evil. He's become like God, potentially capable of fellowship with Him. But unable to be truly good, he's now estranged from God, dead in spirit, and unable to save himself.
This is why God sent His Son. If Jesus came to save us from a physical death, He failed. We will all die someday. But we can be saved from that greater and more devastating death if we will only accept His sacrifice for us.
Adam was never immortal; in Genesis, God even expresses concern that he might become so, and prevents it from happening.
A lot of it is a misunderstanding of what "evolution" really is.
Think about how many breeds of dogs there are. God didn't individually create Golden Retrievers and Beagles and Alaskan Malamutes. Humans separated out traits they liked and bred them together, substituting for environmental stimulus to evolve a breed specialized in those traits they wanted, like a good nose for tracking, or a soft mouth for retrieving fowl without damaging it, a downy undercoat to keep a dog warm and powerful muscles to pull through the snow. But what God created, was the species that our domesticated dogs were bred from, Canis lupus.
Similarly, you can grow bacteria in a petri dish, then introduce discs containing weak concentrations of antibiotics, and grow them, then if you take a sample of the colonies that grow closest to the disc, and put them on another dish with higher concentrations, and keep repeating, you'll find after a few generations, the bacteria can now fill the whole plate and pretty much ignore the antibiotics. Why? Because you provided the bacteria with an environmental pressure so that bacteria that could resist the antibiotic survived and reproduced, while those susceptible to the antibiotic died. All the future generations that were reproducing all had the genetics to resist the antibiotic.
Evolution, as a process, is not incompatible with creationism
If we read the bible with a preconception that God does things entirely through magic, then we'll interpret scripture to back up that preconception,
and assume any time science disagrees with that preconception, than the science is wrong.
So to conclude, is Evolution "the enemy" and Godless and abiblical? Not necessarily. What is the opposing view is not evolution, a process, itself, but rather the NATURALIST world view, that it happened completely on its own, without God.
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