What is the impact of Evolution on the doctrine of Salvation?

[SkyWriting]

I'm saying that we have to choose between believing in Creation (if we want the fall and atonement to be meaningful concepts)

There is no "Special Creation" in scripture for man.
Man was re-made into God's Image and brought to Spiritual Life.
The natural man was cut-down. Whittled into a living being.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Ah baloney

No. Fact.

It's demonstrably incorrect.

Off course, if you attach more truth value to mere a priori faith based beliefs as opposed to the actual empirical evidence of reality, you might miss that fact.

 

[Inkfingers]

There is no "Special Creation" in scripture for man.
Man was re-made into God's Image and brought to Spiritual Life.

1) I do not use the phrase "special creation"
2) shaped from clay is not being "re-made"
3) only a being who was at some point perfect can be restored by atoning sacrifice of Christ
4) a being who evolved from apes was never perfect and so cannot by definition be restored to such - perfection becomes something to evolve into, not something to be restored back into

 

[SkyWriting]

1) I do not use the phrase "special creation"
2) shaped from clay is not being "re-made"
3) only a being who was at some point perfect can be restored by atoning sacrifice of Christ
4) a being who evolved from apes was never perfect and so cannot by definition be restored to such - perfection becomes something to evolve into, not something to be restored back into

It has nothing to do with biological origins.
It's a Spiritual condition of communion with God that we are restored to.
We are not being turned into "Adams" and "Eves"
We are being restored into communion.

 

[DogmaHunter]

That is not what Eden/the-Fall/Atonement is about though. In Eden it is the lack of knowledge of good and evil which is the ideal, the loss of which is the fall, and for which Christ's death is the restoring atonement. It is based on the idea that we were made 'perfect' but lost it and need to regain it, whilst evolution says we evolved from animals rather than fell from a perfect state (and so perfection is something to be achieved not regained...and so does not need an atoning sacrifice of Christ).

For the record...

I completely agree with you that in light of the evolution of species, including (or perhaps "especially") humans, no borderlining narcistic human-centric religion makes any sense.

By that, I mean, religions where humans are the center or even the entire point of "creation" / the universe.

Because what evolution tells us, is that no species was ever "meant" or "intended" to exist. We exist only due to past circumstances. You can call that "luck" if you will, but I don't agree with that. It's neither luck nore bad luck. It just is.

You can also turn it around... Think of the bazibillios of species that could have existed, but don't. Do they have "bad luck"? I don't see how that is a sensible position.

Consider yourself as an individual.

YOU are the result of a specific egg of your mother and a specific sperm cell of your dad.
When your parents had sex, your dad 'donated' MILLIONS of sperm cells. And that's just counting the time they had sex where you were conceived. I think it's safe to assume that it wasn't the first and only time that your dad [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]. Each time = millions of sperm cells. In total, BILLIONS.

Put this into perspective for a second....
Your conception was incredibly circumstantial. So circumtantial in fact, that the odds of YOU existing (a priori) were so ridiculously low, you'ld have more chance of winning the lotterly several times in a row.

Among those billions of other potential children they could have had, surely there were potential humans there smarter then Einstein, more talented with their pen then Shakespear, better at soccer then Eden Hazard (on a sidenote GO BELGIUM!!!! ). So, do all those potential humans have "bad luck"?

You can take a step back and say the exact same thing on the species level.
BILLIONS, nay, TRILLIONS of potential species that could have existed, but never did.

If you could press a reset button, turning back time 3.8 billion years, and have "life" play out again on this planet.... Humans would not exist. They just wouldn't.


In light of this, I say that any religion that puts humans in the center, as being "the point" of the universe, is pretty much absurd.



The fact of the matter is that if our sun would explode tomorrow and obliterate the entire solar system - the universe as a whole would remain virtually exactly the same as before.

That's how insignificant and irrelevant we are on the cosmic scale.
While narcisistic religions would have you believe the exact opposite.


It makes no sense to me at all.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Yahweh the Creator created the world for man, to be inhabited by man, perfectly. No mistakes, nothing missing, nothing lacking.

Man messed up.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Yahweh the Creator created the world for man, to be inhabited by man, perfectly. No mistakes, nothing missing, nothing lacking.

Man messed up.

Sounds like a mantra that you need to repeat over and over again, to believe it.

 

[Inkfingers]

It has nothing to do with biological origins.
It's a Spiritual condition of communion with God that we are restored to.
We are not being turned into "Adams" and "Eves"
We are being restored into communion.

Restored implies we used to have it.

Used to have it implies made perfect and fell. Evolution never made us perfect, it evolved us out of tree-swingers.

Evolution and the idea of needing a restorative sacrificial atonement of Christ are utterly opposed.

 

[yeshuaslavejeff]

Why did Yahweh allow mankind to fall so far in sin and deception ?

Why do men continue to stay in darkness ?

 

[ubicaritas]

I think that's a false dichotomy, especially if we understand the Fall narrative as something other than an historical event in the first place.

Penal substitution has alot of problems going for it even without considering evolution.

Salvation has been understood as more than restoration by Christians since ancient times. In fact, legal satisfaction for sins, at best, is an insignificant theme in most eastern churches.

 

[Sanoy]

Speaking as a Creationist I don't think evolution, even in the fullest sense of TE, is a challenger to Christs message. I think the difficulty you see between the two comes from adding materialism with evolution. We have yet to see a successful theory from evolution for minds with our particular richness and subjectivity. The ones I have seen leave us indifferent from robots. So if we look at this from dualism then our essential nature is not our bodies.

Our bodies localize and interface us with a material world. Many of our sinful desires come from our bodies, in fact I would say the body is the major coercive force on our decisions. And the choices we make in our lifetime effects our own gene expressions which can then be carried on to our kids through epigenetics. So doing the wrong things actually has effects on the next generations ability to do the right things.

I don't think epigenetics was "the fall", but it's an example in which the fall can manifest in many places. Any changes to the body, which there are in the fall, are going to have cognitive effects and therefore spiritual effects. That is not to say sweat and pain in childbirth can be responsible for all of the fall but that there may be further biological effects not mentioned. Like for example the fact that we now "see through a glass darkly" (1 Corinthians 3:12). Belief in a creator, logic, truth, and our moral apprehensions are tied to our blackbox intuitions that may be right here in the body. A slight change in the body may have profound effects and coercions on the spirit. And God did alter our DNA at the fall. We like to imagine that curse in a magical way because we don't identify ourselves with our body, but when God said EVE would have pain in childbirth God changed her DNA. And something similar may have happened through the fruit since upon eating it our bodies will eventually die and our spirits will go to the place of the dead.

I take the image of God here to be imaging of God's nature, which is completely separated from our physical nature. Caring for the orphan and widow is imaging God on earth.

I think the golden age is having bodies that strive for the spirit rather than our current bodies that strive against it.

 

[Brightmoon]

For the record...

I completely agree with you that in light of the evolution of species, including (or perhaps "especially") humans, no borderlining narcistic human-centric religion makes any sense.

By that, I mean, religions where humans are the center or even the entire point of "creation" / the universe.

Because what evolution tells us, is that no species was ever "meant" or "intended" to exist. We exist only due to past circumstances. You can call that "luck" if you will, but I don't agree with that. It's neither luck nore bad luck. It just is.

You can also turn it around... Think of the bazibillios of species that could have existed, but don't. Do they have "bad luck"? I don't see how that is a sensible position.

Consider yourself as an individual.

YOU are the result of a specific egg of your mother and a specific sperm cell of your dad.
When your parents had sex, your dad 'donated' MILLIONS of sperm cells. And that's just counting the time they had sex where you were conceived. I think it's safe to assume that it wasn't the first and only time that your dad [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse]. Each time = millions of sperm cells. In total, BILLIONS.

Put this into perspective for a second....
Your conception was incredibly circumstantial. So circumtantial in fact, that the odds of YOU existing (a priori) were so ridiculously low, you'ld have more chance of winning the lotterly several times in a row.

Among those billions of other potential children they could have had, surely there were potential humans there smarter then Einstein, more talented with their pen then Shakespear, better at soccer then Eden Hazard (on a sidenote GO BELGIUM!!!! ). So, do all those potential humans have "bad luck"?

You can take a step back and say the exact same thing on the species level.
BILLIONS, nay, TRILLIONS of potential species that could have existed, but never did.

If you could press a reset button, turning back time 3.8 billion years, and have "life" play out again on this planet.... Humans would not exist. They just wouldn't.


In light of this, I say that any religion that puts humans in the center, as being "the point" of the universe, is pretty much absurd.



The fact of the matter is that if our sun would explode tomorrow and obliterate the entire solar system - the universe as a whole would remain virtually exactly the same as before.

That's how insignificant and irrelevant we are on the cosmic scale.
While narcisistic religions would have you believe the exact opposite.


It makes no sense to me at all.

It’s a staple for Darwinists who compile lists of human anatomical features supposedly demonstrating “unintelligent” or “botched” design. We’re constantly told that the design of the human larynx, trachea, and oral cavity is poor because it allows for choking on food.

The point is made by the snarky Centre for Unintelligent Design, which lists “The ease with which we can choke” as an example of “unintelligent design,” and by Wikipedia. On the “Argument for poor design“ page they include this under “Fatal flaws” in human anatomy:

The existence of the pharynx, a passage used for both ingestion and respiration, with the consequent drastic increase in the risk of choking...

...That having been said, the design of the human oral cavity looks more like a trade-off than a botch. As Evolution News has put it, “Trade-offs are compromises made to optimize the highest design goal.” They are not errors but necessary features of design in a material world.

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/07/oral-cavitys-supposedly-lousy-design-is-a-key-to-human-speech/

I don’t struggle with this issue as I believe that the stories in Genesis aren’t histories in any way . They’re a just-so story to illustrate that God made everything . Adam and Eve’s story is how everyone feels about being kicked out of the Garden ( the womb) now you're cold and hungry and vulnerable . And the older you get as a child ,the more you feel that way .

 

[Erik Nelson]

Jesus' sacrifice is based on the idea of restoring us to a previous condition, correcting the good-which-became-bad, but if we evolved out of the apes there is (by definition) no previous condition to be restored to. Rather, there is instead a future condition to be evolved into - “image of God” is not something we were, but something we may possibly become. If true, doesn't evolution thus make a nonsense of the idea of Jesus being a substitutionary atonement (to bring us back to a 'golden age condition of pre-fall Eden); presenting us instead with a salvation that has to be evolved into rather than returned to?

I cannot see a way around this.

Either we were created and fell or we are evolved and arose.

Note: Keep in mind that I hold to Theistic Evolution, not Creationism, so I do not have a pro-Creationist axe to grind in any way.

In the context of Theistic Evolution, the "previous condition" would be one in which early pre-historic humanity lived in some sort of Edenic harmony & communion with God... which idyllic state of obedience was broken by disobedience, incurring Divine Wrath upon humankind... Theistic Evolution would involve evolution according to Divine Will and intervention & influence... the "Fall" would be some sort of rebellion against that Will & intervention & influence

 

[Erik Nelson]

The idea is that Jesus brings back to the pre-fall at the very least (and perhaps then takes us on further, but it is still a restoration of what is claimed to have formerly been).

It may be a Restoration+ rather than a simple Restoration(lite) but either way it is a restoration (and thus utterly opposed to Evolution which says there is no condition to be restored back to but rather only one to head forward into).

My understanding of TE suggests the logical possibility that prior to the Fall, mankind did not resist God's guidance of evolution on Earth... the Fall represents disobedience to God's ultimate Divine Authority over our actions on Earth... the "prior condition" was one of harmonious obedience to the "Divine Hand" in evolving human development & history... the "Fall" was rebellion against that intervening influence... not necessarily any incompatibility

 

[TLK Valentine]

Jesus' sacrifice is based on the idea of restoring us to a previous condition, correcting the good-which-became-bad, but if we evolved out of the apes there is (by definition) no previous condition to be restored to. Rather, there is instead a future condition to be evolved into - “image of God” is not something we were, but something we may possibly become. If true, doesn't evolution thus make a nonsense of the idea of Jesus being a substitutionary atonement (to bring us back to a 'golden age condition of pre-fall Eden); presenting us instead with a salvation that has to be evolved into rather than returned to?

I cannot see a way around this.

Either we were created and fell or we are evolved and arose.

Note: Keep in mind that I hold to Theistic Evolution, not Creationism, so I do not have a pro-Creationist axe to grind in any way.

Are you a sinner in need of a savior, yes or no?

Does evolution change that, yes or no?

 

[Inkfingers]

Are you a sinner in need of a savior, yes or no?

Does evolution change that, yes or no?

What interest has an agnostic in such matters?

 

[TLK Valentine]

What interest has an agnostic in such matters?

You're asking questions -- I have an interest in helping people find answers.

 

[mark kennedy]

You would first need to establish that these things actually occured, before trying to explain them. So far, all you have are claims in ancient religious texts. Such claims are a dime a dozen.



And once again, you skipped a couple rather important steps.
What god? What "miracle"? What "authoring of life"?



Don't ask me, I'm not a follower of your religion. For me, this is a total non-issue.
I don't have any need, emotional or otherwise, for marrying these ancient religious claims with observable reality.

I don't have an urge or invested interest in sticking to beliefs that aren't even in evidence....
Especially not those beliefs that are actually contradicted by the evidence.



How so?
Care to give an example?

Ok your not interested in the best historical narratives from antiquity, that's your prerogative. As far as evidence would you like rationalism, paleontology or genomic comparisons? You see unlike most atheists I actually took the time to explore the evidence before getting embroiled in my pet dogmas.

 

[Inkfingers]

You're asking questions -- I have an interest in helping people find answers.

However this thread is not about whether people are sinners (that is taken for granted).

It's about how Evolution is incompatible with Fall/Atonement/Restoration; because evolved creatures ascended to this state, they did not fall to it. Fall/Atonement/Restoration is only compatible with Creationism, which, to a TE like myself is a bolt from the blue.

 

[Inkfingers]

Ok your not interested in the best historical narratives from antiquity, that's your prerogative. As far as evidence would you like rationalism, paleontology or genomic comparisons? You see unlike most atheists I actually took the time to explore the evidence before getting embroiled in my pet dogmas.

I'm not sure what you mean there...