Theistic Evolution makes Judgment and Sin feel distant and less real

[Jacob Black]

The problem with the early OT isn't that it's scientifically impossible, but that there is evidence, scientific and historical, that it didn't happen. That's different. Science can't disprove the existence of miracles. But the problem with Gen 1 isn't that it involves miracles. The problem is that we know a lot about how the universe started and life developed, and Gen 1 is wrong.

Similarly, archaeologists have developed a reasonable understanding of the origin of Israel, based on physical evidence, and the OT description is wrong.

So God is a liar? The OT being wrong would mean that we can also not trust the NT.

 

[Rachel20]

Not sure how we can proclaim the OT wrong when everything we can know about the universe - everything on earth and everthing ever observed by our instruments - makes up less than 5% of the universe - this from NASA's own website

 

[ViaCrucis]

Something I've been pondering lately. I'm now fairly confident that most Christians who believe in Evolution, do so because they have a problem with the idea of the supernatural in general.

Nope, that's just straight up not true. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. We believe that He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, that He descended into hell, that He rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father with all power and authority, and that He will come again to judge the living and the dead and that His kingdom will have no end.

The reason why we accept the theory of evolution is because it is true.

They tend to reject accounts of miracles in the NT (unrelated to Evolution) just as readily as they reject a Genesis worldview of earth history.

Is this just your "gut feeling" or do you actually have valid statistical information to go on? Because my gut feeling, seeing as you don't provide anything to back up this claim of yours, is that you are simply going by your gut feeling probably based on a handful of anecdotal encounters.

But why? I think perhaps we have a hidden motivation to "de-realize" (make the Bible more unreal) because this in turn makes ideas of accountability and God's judgment more unreal. It makes SIN feel less real... Our personal lives, our desires and agendas, get a lot more flexible the more we push the Bible into the realm of symbolic unreal-ness...

"All those stories about God wiping out people who turned away from his commandment? Ehh... that didn't really happen. It's just a moral lesson to help us live better lives..."

If our Creator God really takes judgment and accountability as seriously as he says he does.. then the party down here in the world is over, and we better get a whole lot more serious about taking up our cross and following him. I think a lot of us have one foot planted comfortably in this world, and going along with the secular world's creation story (Evolution) makes it a lot easier to maintain that lifestyle and reap the social benefits of being a "reasonable Christian" ... and not one of those kooks who actually believe all that problematic stuff in scripture about miracles and judgments and stuff.

We assure ourselves that we are just following the "evidence" of Evolution that God left for us, when in reality we are just putting on the goggles of philosophical naturalism, where everything we look at *must* be attributed to a natural process. The result is a weird contradictory blend of professing to believe in the Resurrection, while systematically cleansing all other supernatural accounts out of the Bible.


For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me.
But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

- John 5:46-47

Seeing as all you're doing is denying the validity of our faith in Jesus Christ and our sincerity in holding fast to the historic confessions of the Christian faith, this entire post does nothing but reek of empty slander.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Jacob Black]

I have answered this many times. We sin because we're imperfect. We're imperfect because evolution doesn't have any reason to favor development of morally perfect beings, though there is reason to think that there are basic standards such as fairness and cooperation.

Evolution has mainly favored beings who can adapt to changing situations. Adaptation requires trial and error, and error includes sin.

However part of the problem with sin is that conservative Christians have what is basically the Pharisees' concept of sin, violations of purity. That's not what Jesus taught. There's no reason for evolution to favor beings who are completely pure by traditional standards. There are reasons for it to favor many of Jesus' standards, such as cooperation and fairness.

If sin was caused by evolution, Jesus died in vain.

Nope, that's just straight up not true. We believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. We believe that He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, that He descended into hell, that He rose again on the third day, ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father with all power and authority, and that He will come again to judge the living and the dead and that His kingdom will have no end.

The reason why we accept the theory of evolution is because it is true.



Is this just your "gut feeling" or do you actually have valid statistical information to go on? Because my gut feeling, seeing as you don't provide anything to back up this claim of yours, is that you are simply going by your gut feeling probably based on a handful of anecdotal encounters.



Seeing as all you're doing is denying the validity of our faith in Jesus Christ and our sincerity in holding fast to the historic confessions of the Christian faith, this entire post does nothing but reek of empty slander.

-CryptoLutheran

If evolution is real, explain the fall of man in Genesis 3. Paul literally debunks the entire theory of evolution in Romans 5:12.

 

[Jacob Black]

...

 

[ViaCrucis]

If mankind evolved...then sin is a non-issue. Why? Because that what makes us sinners was a natural step in our evolution. A random mutation changed our DNA one micro step at a time...and eventually produced a population of sinners. That's just who we are and God can't count us accountable for our sin nature.

How is this any different than the population of sinners that sprang from Adam's loins?

If Adam was the first man, whether created literally by a special act of God taking dust from the earth and literally breathing into it; or whether created through evolution, what difference does it make as far as sin is concerned?

How do we become less morally culpable for our sin if our species evolved than if our species just appeared from nothing?

I don't think you've really thought your reasoning out here.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

A Christian believing in the resurrection but not the literal, historical six day creation account points out the hypcrosity.

A Christian believing in the literal, historical six day creation account but not the Eucharist being the literal flesh and blood of Jesus Christ points out the hypocrisy.

Ergo you reject the supernatural in the Bible. Welcome to Team Hypocrite.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

If sin was caused by evolution, Jesus died in vain.

I'll bite--how does Christ's atoning work become meaningless if we evolved from earlier hominids?

If evolution is real, explain the fall of man in Genesis 3.

Sure, man through his natural agency rebelled against God, and thus original sin sprang from Adam to all his progeny--that's all of us.

Paul literally debunks the entire theory of evolution in Romans 5:12.

Well, that's obviously not true. The Apostle doesn't say anything about evolution in Romans 5:12. What he says is that sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin; and thus death has come to all people because all sinned. It is part of St. Paul's theological contrast between Adam and Christ. Where through Adam all have died, through Christ all have been made alive.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Jacob Black]

I'll bite--how does Christ's atoning work become meaningless if we evolved from earlier hominids?



Sure, man through his natural agency rebelled against God, and thus original sin sprang from Adam to all his progeny--that's all of us.



Well, that's obviously not true. The Apostle doesn't say anything about evolution in Romans 5:12. What he says is that sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin; and thus death has come to all people because all sinned. It is part of St. Paul's theological contrast between Adam and Christ. Where through Adam all have died, through Christ all have been made alive.

-CryptoLutheran

Why does God say let us make man in our image in Genesis 1:26 if men evolved from hominids? Did God choose an ape and let it instantly evolve into the man we know as Adam?

 

[ViaCrucis]

Why does God say let us make man in our image in Genesis 1:26 if men evolved from hominids? Did God choose an ape and let it instantly evolve into the man we know as Adam?

Was only Adam (or Adam and Eve) created in the image of God, or are all human beings made in the image of God? Were you created from nothing, or are you the result of the natural processes of sexual reproduction, beginning your life as a fertilized egg/zygote, and then developing as a fetus, and finally being born?

If you are in the image of God, even though you evolved from your parents, then clearly the natural procreative act isn't much of a hindrance to human beings made in the Divine Image.

So why would it be any different than there being a hominid, the first of our kind, having resulted from the divinely ordered creative processes of nature, being the image-bearing creature of God?

Why is one natural process acceptable, but another natural process unacceptable; when it is the same God behind both?

Do you believe God is somehow impotent in the face of scientific observation? I don't. I believe that God is the Almighty maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen.

Your objection isn't theologically sound.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Brightmoon]

There are a lot of extinct protohuman hominids you know.
Some positive caring decent behaviors (that we would call Christian) behaviors show up even in other animals , including some that are not even vertebrates. These evolved in those species just like they evolved in ours .

 

[-57]

How is this any different than the population of sinners that sprang from Adam's loins?

The fall changed the human nature. People suffer the results of the fall.
The fall was a by-product of a delibert choice....not an act of randomness.

If Adam was the first man, whether created literally by a special act of God taking dust from the earth and literally breathing into it; or whether created through evolution, what difference does it make as far as sin is concerned?

Because Adam was the beginning of the human race...no other humans existed...this means what Adam did was felt in every one of his progeny.
The evos say populations evolve. This would not allow all people to receive the sin nature.

How do we become less morally culpable for our sin if our species evolved than if our species just appeared from nothing?

As I said..Adams sin was a deliberate choice against God. If evolutionism caused man to sin then this random process of mutations and natural selection would be by accident....not a deliberate choice.

I don't think you've really thought your reasoning out here.

-CryptoLutheran

You wern't that hard to refute...so I'm guessing you didn't really think it out much.

 

[-57]

A Christian believing in the literal, historical six day creation account but not the Eucharist being the literal flesh and blood of Jesus Christ points out the hypocrisy.

Ergo you reject the supernatural in the Bible. Welcome to Team Hypocrite.

-CryptoLutheran

The bible never says the bread and wine are literally Christ flesh and blood. The bible presents the creation as literal and histrical in many places. Not so with the Eucharist.

 

[-57]

If sin was caused by evolution, Jesus died in vain.


If evolution is real, explain the fall of man in Genesis 3. Paul literally debunks the entire theory of evolution in Romans 5:12.

Yup, 10-4.

The theo-Evoism crowd has to find a way to make one man into a population.

 

[Jacob Black]

Was only Adam (or Adam and Eve) created in the image of God, or are all human beings made in the image of God? Were you created from nothing, or are you the result of the natural processes of sexual reproduction, beginning your life as a fertilized egg/zygote, and then developing as a fetus, and finally being born?

If you are in the image of God, even though you evolved from your parents, then clearly the natural procreative act isn't much of a hindrance to human beings made in the Divine Image.

So why would it be any different than there being a hominid, the first of our kind, having resulted from the divinely ordered creative processes of nature, being the image-bearing creature of God?

Why is one natural process acceptable, but another natural process unacceptable; when it is the same God behind both?

Do you believe God is somehow impotent in the face of scientific observation? I don't. I believe that God is the Almighty maker of heaven and earth, of all things seen and unseen.

Your objection isn't theologically sound.

-CryptoLutheran

God literally formed Adam out of dust, not out of a monkey. Genesis 2:7 ''And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.''

If God created us out of monkeys it would say ''And the Lord God formed man out of the apes in the trees...'' or ''And the Lord God formed apes of the dust of the ground, who in turn became man...''

 

[hedrick]

The question for us is whether we are responsible for our sin. That Adam was responsible is not the issue for us, but whether we are. Paul says that sin entered through Adam, but that all are like him because we sin. He was wrong about Adam, but it’s still true that we’re part of sinful humanity because we sin, even if he’s wrong about how it started.

Rom 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned

 

[hedrick]

God literally formed Adam out of dust, not out of a monkey. Genesis 2:7 ''And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.''

If God created us out of monkeys it would say ''And the Lord God formed man out of the apes in the trees...'' or ''And the Lord God formed apes of the dust of the ground, who in turn became man...''

Yup. Gen 2 is wrong.

 

[-57]

So why would it be any different than there being a hominid, the first of our kind, having resulted from the divinely ordered creative processes of nature, being the image-bearing creature of God?

You'll need to explain just how that works. Did a male and female evolve to the same point of being identified as human at the same time? Is that how it happened?

How did they find each other? What about Adam and Eves brother, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc....surely some of their population would still be around today in a non-fallen state...never mixing with Adams bloodline. As you see Theo-Evo theology falls off track pretty quick.

 

[Brightmoon]

God literally formed Adam out of dust, not out of a monkey. Genesis 2:7 ''And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.''

If God created us out of monkeys it would say ''And the Lord God formed man out of the apes in the trees...'' or ''And the Lord God formed apes of the dust of the ground, who in turn became man...''

. Humans are apes not monkeys sorry couldnt resist !
If you look at animal bodies we are made of chemicals. Mostly carbon hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen. Guess what dirt is mostly made of ?

 

[Brightmoon]

You'll need to explain just how that works. Did a male and female evolve to the same point of being identified as human at the same time? Is that how it happened?

How did they find each other? What about Adam and Eves brother, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, etc....surely some of their population would still be around today in a non-fallen state...never mixing with Adams bloodline. As you see Theo-Evo theology falls off track pretty quick.

. You have an extremely poor understanding of evolution. Why don’t you learn what evolution is before making these silly statements. You remind me of a 5 year old explaining to a pilot how planes fly . It’s not a good look