Theistic Evolution is Unbiblical!

I simply see no biblical basis for the idea that God created all of these changes aftere the Fall. Certainly, man knew sin and was capable of both spiritual and physical death. However, I've never seen anything to support the assertion that not only humans, but all forms of animals experienced death and suffering. Where does it say that the carnivores were vegetarians? And why wouldn't insects or plants be subject to the same rules? And what about parasitic species? Where did they come from and how did they survive before the Fall?

look at the verses:

Gen 1:29 Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
Gen 1:30 and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, {I have given} every green plant for food"; and it was so.

what you have is the same literary structure repeated throughout chapter 1. typical Hebrew poetical structure see:
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=67&letter=P
for a nice discussion of parallelism.

pair a/b
God has dominion/creates
God gives life to mankind/puts him into subordinate position
the big picture is Creation/Providence the great pair of the almighty acts of God.

Man has dominion over animals/animals have dominion over plants

part of the great motif of Gen 1 where God creates the kingdoms and then populates them, finally putting someone/somethings in charge.
with the crescendo being that God is in charge because He created all things.

the crucial element is simply that it doesn't say, God gives only vegetables to man to eat, God gives only green things to the animals to eat. It is a providential ordering of the world. The world is not accidental or a mistake (the common notion in ANE) but rather is a deliberate act of God's sovereign will to create and to sustain the universe.

again you are reading into the Scriptures things which simply are not there.

simply put. it is analogous to those pesky IQ tests:
square is to circle as ace of hearts is to ------.
to find support for human vegetarianism in those verses is eisegesis let alone something as radical as all creatures were vegetarians until the fall.

why?
first the purpose is not didactic but rather descriptive.
second the purpose is to show this divine ordering, everything has a place, and the provision of these places is Providential and a result of the wisdom of God.

Look at the way it unwinds.
from the bottom up.
soil supports plants, plants support animals, man has dominion over both plants and animals.

you might as well make eating eggplant wrong since it is purple and not green. after all God gave green things to eat, not purple.....


...

http://www.searchgodsword.org/lex/heb/frequency.cgi?number=402&book=ge&translation=str

'oklah
means things to eat, generic term. not a specific term to distinquish say a loaf of bread from a pot roast. does 'give us our daily bread' mean we only ought to eat bread? meat here it is a metanomy, just as bread is in the Lord's Prayer, not a command to treat vegetables as meat or a command to be a vegetarian.

The verses in Gen 9 and Isaiah 11 have likewise long standing explanations. Traditionally very few commentators found vegetarianism in these verses before the rise of YECism. The best example is SDA.

Calminian said:

You don't believe the snake in the garden was modified?

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No. It was a snake. I doubt it had legs beforehand--and the text does not say that it did. And I know snakes do not really eat dust.

You don't believe thorns & thistles were modifications?

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No. The text says nothing about thorns and thistles being modifications.

You don't believe the soil was modified?

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Not in any significant way i.e. not in a way that would require changing the laws of nature. It was rendered less fertile so that it produced thorns and thistles more readily than grain.

You don't believe Eve was modified in that she would experience birth pain after the fall (which most mammals experience).

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Yes, she became bi-pedal. Of course, this implies that she was more primitive than Lucy when she was created.

You don't see the fear of man being put into animals after the fall?

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The text says this didn't occur until after the flood. Furthermore, it does not require any modification of any animal. Only that humans begin to hunt them.

gluadys said:

No. It was a snake. I doubt it had legs beforehand--and the text does not say that it did. And I know snakes do not really eat dust.

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Gen. 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

So can we at least conclude he didn't crawl on his belly prior to the fall, right? Therefore something changed physically. I realized you don't want to admit this, but this is the simple reading of the text. And BTW eating dust is just an idiomatic way of saying he would be low to the ground crawling through the dust, etc. We used similar phrases today like "another one bites the dust."

gluadys said:

No. The text says nothing about thorns and thistles being modifications.

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Gen. 3:17 Then to Adam He said, “Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it’: “Cursed is the ground for your sake; In toil you shall eat of it All the days of your life. 18 Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, And you shall eat the herb of the field. 19 In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread Till you return to the ground, For out of it you were taken; For dust you are, And to dust you shall return.”

Thorns and thistles were another result of the fall. The ground didn't bring them forth before. If the ground did bring them forth before the curse to the ground wouldn't make any sense.

gluadys said:

Not in any significant way i.e. not in a way that would require changing the laws of nature. It was rendered less fertile so that it produced thorns and thistles more readily than grain.

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So you'll admit it was made less fertile but refuse to admit God did it supernaturally?

gluadys said:

Yes, she became bi-pedal. Of course, this implies that she was more primitive than Lucy when she was created.

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Now that's classic. I'll have to remember that!

Gen. 3:16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children....

So you'll admit a physiological change took place, but believe the only way God could have created her without having birth pains is to have created her very primitive like Lucy. Wow!

gluadys said:

The text says this didn't occur until after the flood. Furthermore, it does not require any modification of any animal. Only that humans begin to hunt them.

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The point is, God effected many modifications to his creation after the fall. And these would include the instinct of animals to avoid humans (it has nothing to do with the animals eye-witnessing men hunting them) and even the confusing of the languages at Babel. Both of these would require physiological changes in the brain.

Genesis is replete with post fall modifications. I don’t know why you guys are fighting this.

Calminian and mhess, you both have presented the truth here. If they don't want to believe it because they cannot see, then there really isn't anything else that can be said.

The debate is fun, but it gets old when the other side will refuse everything you bring up, as being truth, even Biblical teachings.

This is not a win-win debate, not any of these threads are. This is a lose-win debate, where they will not recognize what the Bible actually says. They have a world view they must uphold, anything different would not be acceptable. Gluady's has said ALL of evolution has to be true.

What is the point to the debate when they have plugged their ears and scream loudly so they cannot hear you? If they ever decide to listen, they may hear, but it doesn't appear to be anytime soon, unfortunately.

Calminian said:

gluadys said:

Yes, she became bi-pedal. Of course, this implies that she was more primitive than Lucy when she was created.

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Now that's classic. I'll have to remember that!

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Glad you liked it. I had fun writing it too.

Genesis is replete with post fall modifications. I don’t know why you guys are fighting this.

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Calminian, I am not really fighting anything. I really, really do interpret all of this non-literally. The creation account in Gen. 2-3 is, as far as I am concerned, a classic folk myth. One of the characteristics of such myths is that they offer explanations of present realities. (If you ever studied Greek myths, you will remember that the story of Narcissus is an "explanation" of the narcissus flower, and the story of Demeter and Persephone is an "explanation" of the seasons.) So in Gen. 2-3 we have mythical explanations of why the snake has no legs, why thorns and thistles interfere with agriculture, and why women have pain in childbirth. And in the story of Babel we have an explanation for why people speak different languages. Such mythical explanations were the "science" of ancient times before scientific explanations were available. They were also both good campfire stories and a way to teach theology and morals.

I have no problem at all in saying I believe God inspired the biblical writers to preserve these sacred myths for our edification. But as history or science, they simply do not cut the mustard.

SBG said:

Calminian and mhess, you both have presented the truth here. If they don't want to believe it because they cannot see, then there really isn't anything else that can be said.

The debate is fun, but it gets old when the other side will refuse everything you bring up, as being truth, even Biblical teachings.

This is not a win-win debate, not any of these threads are. This is a lose-win debate, where they will not recognize what the Bible actually says. They have a world view they must uphold, anything different would not be acceptable. Gluady's has said ALL of evolution has to be true.

What is the point to the debate when they have plugged their ears and scream loudly so they cannot hear you? If they ever decide to listen, they may hear, but it doesn't appear to be anytime soon, unfortunately.

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one of the interesting and curious facet of this discussion is the radical polarization into us=God's and them=demonic. The pressure AFAICS comes pretty much from the right, the YECists. An expression of this radical polarization is seen in this message. It is also a marked tendency in AiG.

i wrote this in my blog last night

For Noll, these four options are reduced to a forced dichotomy--either orthodoxy and slavery, or heresy and antislavery" by the slippery slope to unbelief argument inherent in the idea that to modify your literal hermeneutic was to attack the very basis of inspiration and authority, so that those who spoke against slavery were immediately condemned by Southerners as 'liberals' who did not accept the Bible as the very Word of God. This is the issue that about two years ago had me personally making the connection between a Young Earth Creationist ideology and slavery. The radical dichotomy, the semi-Manichean stance that there are only two sides to the discussion: God's and Satan's, and if you are not with us then you are being used by evil. Noll explains that it is this literal, common sense, man in the pew, democratic hermeneutic that had evolved in the US over the last 250 years that was responsible for the problem. He explicitly ties three things into it: Scriptura sola, the regulative principle, and the Third Use of the Law (moral teaching shows need for salvation as well as a blueprint for the Christian's grateful response to God). It is this democratization of Bible reading and application that has it's source in the priesthood of all believers in Luther but only derives its power from its tie into the social culture of the nascent US in republicanism via the English as opposed to the French revolutionary experience. This democratic hermeneutic required that the fundamental meaning be singular, literal, usually narrative, simple for everyone (the hand on the plow ideal) must be able to read the words for themselves. This eliminates the educated, difficult, literary entanglements, complexity, multiple levels etc for the common sense as derived from the Scottish commonsense realism philosophers.

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from: http://www.livejournal.com/users/rmwilliamsjr/154995.html

like Vance's interest in Copernican revolution and how the church adjusted to it, i find the topic of slavery another key issue in the history of hermeneutics. What is on topic here is that expression of: evolution=demonic yec=godly and the associated need to prove that your opponents are deaf blind and dumb since they can not (must be willful) see what you see so clearly. what is important is that the long term results of this dichotomization is civil war, because there can be no dialogue with the deaf, nor understanding from 'screamers'. When this happened in the churches in the late 1830's and the major denominations split along north-south lines it made the civil war virtually inevitable. i don't know if YECism will split the churches like slavery did, but radical manicheanism will.

....

rmwilliamsll said:

one of the interesting and curious facet of this discussion is the radical polarization into us=God's and them=demonic. The pressure AFAICS comes pretty much from the right, the YECists. An expression of this radical polarization is seen in this message. It is also a marked tendency in AiG.

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Where did I say you or a te was demonic?

gluadys said:

Calminian, I am not really fighting anything. I really, really do interpret all of this non-literally. The creation account in Gen. 2-3 is, as far as I am concerned, a classic folk myth. One of the characteristics of such myths is that they offer explanations of present realities. (If you ever studied Greek myths, you will remember that the story of Narcissus is an "explanation" of the narcissus flower, and the story of Demeter and Persephone is an "explanation" of the seasons.) So in Gen. 2-3 we have mythical explanations of why the snake has no legs, why thorns and thistles interfere with agriculture, and why women have pain in childbirth. And in the story of Babel we have an explanation for why people speak different languages. Such mythical explanations were the "science" of ancient times before scientific explanations were available. They were also both good campfire stories and a way to teach theology and morals.

I have no problem at all in saying I believe God inspired the biblical writers to preserve these sacred myths for our edification. But as history or science, they simply do not cut the mustard.

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I'm not disputing whether or not you take these passages literally. My only point was that if you do take them literally there are post fall modifications to the creation. A lot of OECs ask YECs how they can explain some features certain animals have being that they were originally intended not to kill or be harmful. To me it seems very obvious that just as certain plants were given thorns for defense after the fall, so also perhaps bees were given stingers, eels given electricity, etc.

I also hear some OECs talk about us still being in the 7th day and God is still resting from the creating process. But clearly a literal reading of the text shows this not to be the case. We're given specific examples of humans, plants, animals and even the ground undergoing supernatural changes.

So anyway, if your point is just you don't take the passages literally that's fine (although I don't think that's good idea). But I think rmwII's point was that even literally the text doesn't support post fall changes.

rmwilliamsll said:

one of the interesting and curious facet of this discussion is the radical polarization into us=God's and them=demonic. The pressure AFAICS comes pretty much from the right, the YECists. An expression of this radical polarization is seen in this message. It is also a marked tendency in AiG.

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While I would agree with you that polarization can happen, I think you're overstepping a bit blaming it all on YECs and AiG. Both sides are capable of being condescending. I say we all cool down and get back on point.

rmwilliamsll said:

like Vance's interest in Copernican revolution and how the church adjusted to it, i find the topic of slavery another key issue in the history of hermeneutics. What is on topic here is that expression of: evolution=demonic yec=godly and the associated need to prove that your opponents are deaf blind and dumb since they can not (must be willful) see what you see so clearly.

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Awe come on, you've been around these forums enough to know the vitriol or dogmatism isn't only coming from one side.

rmwilliamsll said:

what is important is that the long term results of this dichotomization is civil war, because there can be no dialogue with the deaf, nor understanding from 'screamers'. When this happened in the churches in the late 1830's and the major denominations split along north-south lines it made the civil war virtually inevitable. i don't know if YECism will split the churches like slavery did, but radical manicheanism will.

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I'm not sure where you're going with the slavery analogy but in that case one side was deaf and dumb. This is a moot point and I do understand your point, but biblical slavery and slavery in ANE culture was very different from what we had in this country—the main difference being it was almost always initiated by the slave. Finding a good master was actually a means of survival—it was actually a necessity for many people. In early america we were ripping men from their families and shipping them overseas. There was no room for unity on that issue. Anyway just a side point. And no I don’t think TEs are on the same level and pro-slavery christians.

Calminian said:

Awe come on, you've been around these forums enough to know the vitriol or dogmatism isn't only coming from one side.

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Given that dogmatism is adherence to a belief system or set of dogma, science is anything but dogmatic. It is just following evidence. There are no dogma to be dogmatic about. so I disagree with your suggestion that dogmatism exists on both sides.

grmorton said:

Given that dogmatism is adherence to a belief system or set of dogma, science is anything but dogmatic. It is just following evidence. There are no dogma to be dogmatic about. so I disagree with your suggestion that dogmatism exists on both sides.

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Science is simply a method of investigation. A method of investigation can't be dogmatic, happy, sad, etc.. Who said anything about science being dogmatic? Only people can be dogmatic, rude, vitriolic, etc. Do you disagree? And do you disagree it comes from both sides?

Calminian said:

I'm not disputing whether or not you take these passages literally. My only point was that if you do take them literally there are post fall modifications to the creation.

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You are right, and I had already decided to elaborate more on this point. Because I also agree that there is very little indication of modifications after the fall.

The only major modification---and it is a big one---is the rupture of fellowship between humanity and God. But that is not a physical matter.

To me it seems very obvious that just as certain plants were given thorns for defense after the fall,

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And this is the first place I am going to stop you. Where in the text does it say some plants were given thorns? What is says is "Cursed is the ground because of you...thorns and thistles it shall bring forth." It says nothing about any plant changing from not having thorns to having thorns. What is changed is the soil, not the plants.

The point of this change is so that Adam must labour to produce food from the ground (just as Eve must labour to produce children). "In toil shall you eat of it [earth] all the days of your life...you shall eat the plants of the field...by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread." This is in contrast to the pre-fall way of life which was based on gathering food from the trees and collecting herbs from the ground without toil (i.e. Adam was to become an agriculturalist instead of a gatherer.)

This is reinforced by the expulsion from the garden "to till the ground from which he was taken." Remember, he had been placed in the garden, where all was ready to support his existence. Now he was returned to the world outside the garden. For all we know thorns and thistles were already growing outside the garden. And now, instead of just gathering food ready to hand, Adam had to work the ground to make it grow the food he needs, and he has to combat those thorns and thistles which grow so persistently when he wants barley and wheat and vegetables.

By reading this to say plants (instead of the ground) were changed to grow thorns, you are adding something to the text that simply is not there.

so also perhaps bees were given stingers, eels given electricity, etc.

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But this would imply that God's curse was much broader than the text says. There is nothing in scripture to support this addition.

rmwilliamsll said:

like Vance's interest in Copernican revolution and how the church adjusted to it, i find the topic of slavery another key issue in the history of hermeneutics.
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David N. Livingstone makes a similar point in Darwin's Forgotten Defenders. (This was originally published by eerdman's in 1987 and until recently was available through www.regentpublishing.com but I see it is no longer listed and may be out of print again.)

Here are some pertinent observations from chapter 4 "The Great Divide" which focuses on the 1920s rise of creationism.

"Theologically there was a clear shift in the perception of what Darwinism was actually challenging. For the older generation the issue centered on the problem of design; for the younger it was the authority of the bible."

"On the cultural side, the post-Civil War crisis, particularly in America's southern states, led many evangelicals to sense a turning from Christian to secular civilization. ... Southerners had every reason to stick to stick to the letter of the law rather than the spirit. As Marsden* writes, 'Committed to the letter of the scriptures regarding slavery, such southeners were hardly in a position to play fast and loose with other passages that might be interpreted in light of modern progress.' "

* Marsden, George M, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism 1870-1925 New York, Oxford University Press, 1980

Both passages from p. 166 Darwin's Forgotten Defenders

NOTE to creationists: this is a comment on the roots of fundamentalism and its "domain" in the 1920s. It does not imply that modern southeners support slavery or that fundamentalism is limited to American southeners, or that all American southerners are committed to fundamentalism. And it most certainly does not mean that anti-evolutionists are pro-slavery. -k?

As SBG has rightly noted, the slavery issue is a done deal.

All that this is saying is that the slavery/abolition debates of the 19th century impinged on how each group related to and interpreted scripture, and those habits of interpretation (not the commitment to slavery) are still operative today in the pro/anti-evolution debates.

Interestingly, to go back to the very first quote, where Livingstone speaks of a shift in perception of what the debate over evolution is about (design or authority of scripture) we can see creationism as focusing primarily on the authority of scripture intepreted literally, while ID has picked up again the earlier argument from design as incompatible with evolution.

_Darwin's Forgotten Defenders_ is certainly one of the best books in the field of how key theologians interacted with Darwin's ideas in the first generation. I'm glad you mentioned it. btw, there is a copy at the public library here in Tucson which means that it is interlibrary loan-able.

I'm not sure where you're going with the slavery analogy but in that case one side was deaf and dumb. This is a moot point and I do understand your point, but biblical slavery and slavery in ANE culture was very different from what we had in this country—the main difference being it was almost always initiated by the slave. Finding a good master was actually a means of survival—it was actually a necessity for many people. In early america we were ripping men from their families and shipping them overseas. There was no room for unity on that issue. Anyway just a side point. And no I don’t think TEs are on the same level and pro-slavery christians.

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Like Marsden, Noll for example, i am interested in how a particular hermeneutic, that loosely described as: Scottish common sense, man in the pew, literal, narrative, democratic, individualistic etc that evolved in the US and reached a zenith in the words of C. Hodge, B.B. Warfield and Princeton was used. I am interested because i am involved, that is not just the hermeneutic of my Church, i am PCA, but my own hermenetic which i have invested more than 25 years of my life. After Calvin, my favorite and most influenced by theologian is R.Dabney, i struggle with his book _Defense of Virginia_ and with the legacy of the past. I do so with as much thought and effort at study as i can. Where i am going is to try to understand not just what the hermeneutic is and how to use it in both public and private Bible study, but specifically how not to use it as it involves several places where it has lead to erronous conclusions: the age of the earth, slavery, geocentricism. To struggle to see how these issues are related to that crucial point where you must make a transition from what the words mean in the social culturally complex to which they were written and to apply them to a different time and place.

It is this level where the Princetonian hermeneutic has a weakness. The concentration that many have at criticizing a wooden overly literally hermeneutic misses its mark, things are more complex than that. But the study of historical episodes, whether Galileo or Dabney, or Warfield is certainly how to modify our current hermeneutic to allow us to better interact with modern science without decreasing our committment to a n authoritative and inspired Scripture.

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gluadys said:

And this is the first place I am going to stop you. Where in the text does it say some plants were given thorns? What is says is "Cursed is the ground because of you...thorns and thistles it shall bring forth." It says nothing about any plant changing from not having thorns to having thorns. What is changed is the soil, not the plants.

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Then what was the cursing of the ground? If thorns and thistles were already there then the the ground was already cursed before the fall. If the snake was already crawling on his belly before the fall then the he was already cursed before the fall.

gluadys said:

The point of this change is so that Adam must labour to produce food from the ground (just as Eve must labour to produce children). "In toil shall you eat of it [earth] all the days of your life...you shall eat the plants of the field...by the sweat of your face you shall eat bread." This is in contrast to the pre-fall way of life which was based on gathering food from the trees and collecting herbs from the ground without toil (i.e. Adam was to become an agriculturalist instead of a gatherer.)

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If the curse was merely expulsion from the Garden then no curse on the ground and animals was necessary. Why did God curse a ground already cursed? A question: Which ground was cursed? The ground of the garden or the ground outside the garden?

gluadys said:

This is reinforced by the expulsion from the garden "to till the ground from which he was taken." Remember, he had been placed in the garden, where all was ready to support his existence. Now he was returned to the world outside the garden. For all we know thorns and thistles were already growing outside the garden. And now, instead of just gathering food ready to hand, Adam had to work the ground to make it grow the food he needs, and he has to combat those thorns and thistles which grow so persistently when he wants barley and wheat and vegetables.

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Then no curse of the ground was necessary. This is just forcing meaning into the text instead of drawing meaning out of it.

gluadys said:

By reading this to say plants (instead of the ground) were changed to grow thorns, you are adding something to the text that simply is not there.

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By saying the ground was already producing thorns, already cursed, you're contradicting the text.

gluadys said:

But this would imply that God's curse was much broader than the text says. There is nothing in scripture to support this addition.

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IOW a literal reading of the text implies broad post fall modifications. I agree. The Bible does say thorns were a result of the cursed ground which was a result of the fall. It does say the snake was cursed more than all other animals. The implication is the curse was broader than the things mentioned.

Calminian said:

Then what was the cursing of the ground? If thorns and thistles were already there then the the ground was already cursed before the fall.

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Even if the earth had never produced thorns and thistles before and only began producing them after the fall, no plants were modified. The ground was modified to produce these new plants.

If the curse was merely expulsion from the Garden then no curse on the ground and animals was necessary.

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The text does not speak of any animals other than a snake, a man and a woman being cursed.

A question: Which ground was cursed? The ground of the garden or the ground outside the garden?

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Since it is stated that Adam will till the soil outside the garden (Gen. 3:23), and later (Gen. 5:29) that this ground is affected by the curse, we know that the ground outside the garden was cursed. We do not know whether the ground in the garden was also cursed, as the text does not specify.

IOW a literal reading of the text implies broad post fall modifications.

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Let's see. A snake, which may or may not have had legs beforehand now crawls on its belly and eats "dust". Soil which did not produce thorns and thistles before now does---increasing the human workload. And women experience change in childbirth.


That's all! And I agree it is quite a bit. But, this is a very long way from creationist contentions that basic physical laws that determine the speed of light were changed or that carnivores were vegetarians before the fall. Or that, as some contend, there was a vapour canopy above the earth and water stored in cisterns beneath the earth's crust in preparation for the flood. Or, as others contend, the fauna of Eden included dinosaurs.

It does say the snake was cursed more than all other animals. The implication is the curse was broader than the things mentioned.

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And when the angel tells Mary that she is blessed above all other women, does that imply other women will also be virgin mothers?

In both cases, there is no implication that others will be cursed/blessed at all. It is simply a figure of speech to denote that the curse/blessing will place the snake/Mary in a unique position in regard to other animals/women.

It does not indicate a broadening of application of the curse/blessing.