Theistic Evolutionist...

[pat34lee]

I am inclined to argue we are born either neutral or basically good, capable of making good choices.

Psalm 14:1-3
1 {To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.} The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
2 The LORD looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God.
3 They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy: there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

Romans 3:9-12
9 What then? are we better than they? No, in no wise: for we have before proved both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin;
10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one:
11 There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.
12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.

John 3:19
And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

 

[Hoghead1]

Gen. 1 and have different subjects? I don't think that is going to work. Some self-styled apologists have tried to argue Gen. 2 is referring to some sort of second creation in the Garden. Doesn't work. However, I'm certainly willing to hear your case for their being different subjects. Also, I hold these accounts were composed by different writers at differ times. Gen. 2 was written before Gen. 1. How do you account for that? And please don't give me the old, sad excuse that you know contemporary biblical studies, affirming more than one author for the Pentateuch, is a conspiracy of the Devil. Over to you.

 

[Hoghead1]

The biblical passages you cite in support of original sin simply do not claim anywhere near that. They are bemoaning the fact that we often chose the wrong option. There is absolutely nothing TULIP here. No calms that people are hardwired to do only evil, can't do any good unless moved by the Spirit, etc.

 

[Shemjaza]

I can't speak for the angels...but the bible does speak 100% of the humans.

In a literal Genesis humans are perfectly created and functioning exactly as God designed, and yet were still able to sin.

You're about two decades behind the times. The number is more like 85% and dropping fast.

I'm curious about where you got that number? Everything I've read from recent analysis from the complete human and chimp genomes reinforces the very close genetic similarity.

Free will is always dangerous. You can choose wrong or evil. Unlike what
liberals believe, you cannot legislate goodness. The only way to ensure
that someone does the right thing all the time is to remove every bit of
free will they have and make them slaves.

How do the concepts of heaven and salvation function then? If sin is always possible in presence of free will are you saying that all Christians have their free will taken from them when they reach heaven?

 

[Hoghead1]

If I were to take the Genesis account literally, I would argue that they sinned by their own freer will. They made a bad choice. That does not mean that free will should be taken away. That would make no sense, as it is also the case that free will enables you to choose the good over the bad. Also, I do not see any way in which God could have created a world without free will. I believe God's aim is for ever increasing beauty. Beauty demands complexity, and complexity means more choices, and so more chances of making a wrong one. For God to have created a universe sin free, he would have had to create everything wholly simple and downright ugly and boring.

 

[lesliedellow]

The biblical passages you cite in support of original sin simply do not claim anywhere near that. They are bemoaning the fact that we often chose the wrong option. There is absolutely nothing TULIP here. No calms that people are hardwired to do only evil, can't do any good unless moved by the Spirit, etc.

There is a tendency amongst Calvinists nowadays to bemoan the term "total depravity". The point is not that we cannot do good, but their is always some admixture of a selfish motive in our good actions. Jesus criticised the ostentatious giving of alms. Now there is certainly nothing wrong with the giving of alms as such; what was wrong was the motive. Whilst we may not all be as hypocritical as the Pharisees, it is only a matter of degree.

 

[Loudmouth]

That's silly. forced to do what you think based upon what?

I am giving you the facts. If you want to ignore them, that is your choice.

 

[Loudmouth]

The only problem with the evidence is how you interpret it. Nothing comes with signs
painted on them with a date stamp.

The only problem is that you have not shown my interpretations to be incorrect. Afterall, what good are facts without interpretation?

 

[Loudmouth]

You're about two decades behind the times. The number is more like 85% and dropping fast.

No, it isn't. The 98% was the conclusion in the 2005 chimp genome paper which compared 95% of the human genome to about 90% of the chimp genome. Nothing has come out since then to change that conclusion.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16136131

You appear to have been suckered by creationist websites who spread misinformation about this data.

 

[Loudmouth]

That makes no sense at all..or you don't really know what a literalist is.

A literalist is a person who holds to an interpretation of Genesis that is directly contradicted by mountains of facts.

When a claim is contradicted by facts, that claim is false. That's how reality works.

 

[AV1611VET]

When a claim is contradicted by facts, that claim is false. That's how reality works.

Like Thalidomide?

 

[ecco]

It is meant to be interpreted like a "dream" since that's probably where it came from, imagine some little primitive village, where, not to insult their not highly educated, and some six year old girl has a vision or a dream one night, and it' the story of Adam & Eve and the garden and such, and the dream was so highly detailed and so vivid and very profound, so advanced to such a primitive species, that everybody thought it was from God when they heard it, and they decided to "record" it, and pass it down through the generations... Just don't know?

God Bless!

More likely sitting around a campfire long ago, someone asked:

• Oh great chief, where did we all come from?

Leaders, then and now, can never say "I don't know", so great chief said (depending on the great chief):

• In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
• In the beginning of time, there was nothing.
• When the earth first became hot and the heavens churned.
• In the beginning there was absolutely nothing.
• The world at first was endless space in which existed only the Creator.

This happened all across the world in every society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_creation_myths
http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/CS/CSIndex.html
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab83​

 

[lesliedellow]

Like Thalidomide?

I do believe AV has Thalidomide on the brain.

 

[ecco]

A literalist is a person who holds to an interpretation of Genesis that is directly contradicted by mountains of facts.

A literalist is a person who holds to an interpretation of Genesis that is directly contradicted by the facts of mountains.




Sorry, couldn't resist.

 

[Shemjaza]

If I were to take the Genesis account literally, I would argue that they sinned by their own freer will. They made a bad choice. That does not mean that free will should be taken away. That would make no sense, as it is also the case that free will enables you to choose the good over the bad. Also, I do not see any way in which God could have created a world without free will. I believe God's aim is for ever increasing beauty. Beauty demands complexity, and complexity means more choices, and so more chances of making a wrong one. For God to have created a universe sin free, he would have had to create everything wholly simple and downright ugly and boring.

Why is choice between good and bad necessary though? And how is evil kept out of heaven? If all the people in there have free will and can choose the wrong decisions, why doesn't it happen?

 

[Loudmouth]

Like Thalidomide?

Thalidomide is a chemical, not a claim. Is there a claim you wish to point to?

 

[AV1611VET]

I do believe AV has Thalidomide on the brain.

I think of it every now and then.

 

[Hoghead1]

I'm afraid I don't agree, Leslie. Original sin, which was introduced by Augustine, is the concept that we are in fact born totally evil, corrupt through and through. That point was very much stressed in his response to Pelagius, for example. The latter argued we are born good but then can be corrupted by the company we keep, etc. Augustine insisted we are born, as I said, totally corrupt. Hence, original sin does not mean just that we sin, it means more, it means we are born totally corrupt. I don't know where you get the notion that Calvinists are dumming it down here. None of the Calvinists I know have done so. The fact that biblical passages point to us sinning have nothing to do with original sin, as many other concepts can account for sinning. You brought up self-interest. It is true that Christianity as painted a picture where pure altruism is the goal, egotism totally wrong. I disagree, however. I believe egotism and altruism are one. Thinking of yourself is always altruistic, for you are thinking about a future person you will become. Also, because reality is social-relational, you cannot be happy unless your brother is happy. Many people admire Mother Teresa,. They paint a picture of her as totally forgetting herself, her pleasures, emotional enrichment, and turning herself into a doormat to serve others. I agree she is a fine example of altruism. But if you watch her more closely, you will see she does have a strong ego. She gains great pleasure and personal satisfaction from her work. She truly enjoys being with those children. She knows their presence enriched her life, just as she enriches theirs. She is a demonstration of my point: Egotism and altruism are one. Much of our sinning is caused by us forgetting that. Also, nothing in the Bible claims that Adam and Eve were born "perfect," or ever were. And if you ask me, when they sinned, they sinned upwards, in a positive direction, seeking out more knowledge.

 

[lesliedellow]

I'm afraid I don't agree, Leslie. Original sin, which was introduced by Augustine, is the concept that we are in fact born totally evil, corrupt through and through. That point was very much stressed in his response to Pelagius, for example. The latter argued we are born good but then can be corrupted by the company we keep, etc. Augustine insisted we are born, as I said, totally corrupt. Hence, original sin does not mean just that we sin, it means more, it means we are born totally corrupt. I don't know where you get the notion that Calvinists are dumming it down here. None of the Calvinists I know have done so.

They are not dumbing it down in complaining that, in retrospect, the terminology could have been better chosen.

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/tulip-and-reformed-theology-total-depravity

"So the idea of total in total depravity doesn’t mean that all human beings are as wicked as they can possibly be..... I like to replace the term total depravity with my favourite designation, which is radical corruption."

Like too many evangelicals, he could do with a science education, but there is nothing much wrong with his theology.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Just for the record, the 98% number keeps changing.

Just for the record, that number depends on how the similarity is measured. Various methods exist.

Some will show 96% others will show 98%, etc.
However, it's always consistent accross the board. No method shows more similarity with mice then it does to other primates for example.

Secondly, a common creator would re-use some of the genome for similiar creations.

That would be a decend argument, if the similarity being talked about would only refer to "common blocks". But that's not accurate. What is striking is the patterns of similarities. Its hierarchical nature. That is NOT something we would expect in context of a "common creator".

Evolution explains why chickens, who don't have teeth, have DNA to build teeth.
Evolution explains why we share an enormous amount of ERV's with chimps (=which is inserted DNA as a result of an infection).

A "common creation" does NOT explain such a thing. Not at all. In fact, it only raises even more questions.


Just to illustrate....
Imagine a computer that only requires 4 wires to connect all the parts to the motherboard. Analogous to chicken DNA to build teeth, the case of the computer would hold those 4 wires and in addition another bunch of wires that aren't connected to anything. Or that are connected to stuff that isn't working, for example a hard drive that isn't connected to the power supply and thus "just sits there".

That's not how an engineer does things.
It's not energy/resource efficient. It's bad practice. It's bad design.
Any engineer working like that would be fired instantly for being a total amateur.

However, a process like evolution would inevitably lead to such structures.

For evolution, it would actually be a bigger challenge to explain why a teeth-less animal like chickens would have NO TRACE of genes to build teeth at all!

In an evolutionary context, it is fully expected to find such inactive genes or traces thereof in teethless animals, considering their ancestry.

Another great example is the non-functioning eyes of moles. They can't even open their eyes. Their eyeballs are covered by a layer of skin. Their eyes do not function. But they are still there, hidden behind skin.

An engineer who's going to design a life form that does not have the ability of sight, is not going to give it eyeballs and have it spend resources and energy on developping those eyeballs....

Likewise, an engineer who's going to design a life form that has no teeth, is not going to give it the "codes" to build teeth.


It amazes me that people use this argument..... "similarity = common design". As if a chicken having non-functioning DNA to build teeth or a mole having non-functioning eyeballs is better explained by an "all-knowing perfect engineer" then through the process of evolution - in which it is actually EXPECTED to encounter such structures.

Amazing.