Why are some Christians anti Evolution?

[AV1611VET]

The biggest reason to be "anti" is the strange totally mistaken ideas they have.

Would you know the "strange idea" was correct if you heard it? or would you be too busy being anti?

 

[NBB]

It can come up with that if an omnipotent, omniscient god intended evolution to come up with it.

Of course, but then evolution as described by scientists is wrong.. they say it doesn't need any God and its a natural process that works its things without any help, something is missing about that and God making things.

 

[renniks]

Because people are seeing this as a barrier to even considering ToE.

You should not start debates if you don't know about one half of the subject matter. First study what the Bible actually says about creation before trying to fit evolution into the Bible.

 

[Tinker Grey]

they say it doesn't need any God

False. Scientists don't say anything about gods at all.

 

[NBB]

False. Scientists don't say anything about gods at all.

Yes they do, when they say evolution is a process like a computer doing its thing alone can make a human or a ant whatever by itself, they are saying God is not needed at all, like the deceased Stephen Hawking believed.

 

[ottawak]

Yes they do, when they say evolution is a process like a computer doing its thing alone can make a human or a ant whatever by itself, they are saying God is not needed at all, like the deceased Stephen Hawking believed.

So nothing in the universe needs God to function? Maybe everything does.

 

[Astrid]

Yes they do, when they say evolution is a process like a computer doing its thing alone can make a human or a ant whatever by itself, they are saying God is not needed at all, like the deceased Stephen Hawking believed.

Snowflakes falling in the mountains form into glaciers
that carve the mountains, and as they advance and melt the
carry silt...you get rivers with braided channels cut off
oxbows, all manner of intricate structures and processes.
Waterfalls- wonderful stuff, all from snowflakes falling
where they may.

Now, it may be, who really knows? There may be a god,
but where exactly is his role in the formation of a river
system?
What do you think?
Is all of it ordained and directed, every snowflake to
its alloted station and path to the sea? Surely God is not needed
to do that any more than to run your toaster.

Does it work to study hydrology and geology and
all of that, learn how it all fits together, how it operates,
understand it?

Nothing in learning how things work diminishes in
the least any god that is real. Does it? How could
In my five years as a sciences major at American Uni
i met a lot of Christians. Most of my professors were
Christians.
I took it to be that the study of chemistry, biology,
geology etc was to some essentially an act of worship,
a way of showing their deep regard, respect, awe,
for God.

Isnt it an act of profound disrespect to deny that
the world works as it actually does, for any reason?

 

[Astrid]

So nothing in the universe needs God to function? Maybe everything does.

Maybe! But on what level?

 

[stevil]

You should not start debates if you don't know about one half of the subject matter. First study what the Bible actually says about creation before trying to fit evolution into the Bible.

I started this thread, not as a debate, but to understand better why some Christians leap towards rejecting ToE. For me to learn what their driving force is.

 

[AV1611VET]

Waterfalls- wonderful stuff, all from snowflakes falling where they may.

Job 38:22a Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow?

Psalm 148:8 Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind fulfilling his word:

 

[Sorn]

Where? I think you have me confused with someone else.

Oh yes, my bad, i did get you confused with another responder.

 

[Sorn]

Were Adam and Eve like the animals before they ate the fruit of knowledge?
Did eating the fruit make Adam and Eve like the gods? With the ability to now know right form wrong?
Before - they were not moral agents, incapable of making moral decisions.
After - they had moral agency, they understood right from wrong and now this became part of their decision making. So only after eating the fruit did they truly become human????

Adam & Eve always had moral agency, they just hadn't had it tested before the fall. They knew what right and wrong was, right = obey God, wrong = disobey God.

What they didn't know was the consequence of their actions, this is the lie the devil told them, you will know what is right and what is wrong, ie you will be able to say this is wrong because it will cause this to happen etc. But that is beyond people to do, to know the full consequence of an action and therefore judge its merit and correctness.

If I tell a lie, i may have judged the very short term result accurately but I can not judge the long term result of that lie accurately or how everybody will react or respond to it, so i may have to then tell other lies to support it further and that just compounds the problem. All we need to know is do not lie, not what the effect of any one lie will be and then decide if its worth doing or not.
All Adam & Eve had to do was obey God, trust in Him, and they chose not too. So yes, they had moral agency and that is when it was tested and they failed.

 

[Sorn]

This has been hinted at by several postings, but there are a couple of serious consequences.

1) If evolution is true, most likely Genesis 1 - 3 are not historical. There are various arguments about how a day may be an age, but in fact most people who accept evolution take Gen 1 - 3 at face value, and think they’re wrong, at least as history. But the moment you accept that the Bible may be wrong, there are other questions: Modern archaeologists generally don’t think anything before maybe the time of the kings is accurate. In specific, the Exodus as described didn’t happen. In fact the current understanding is that the people who became Israel largely originated in the hill country in Palestine, and moved into the cities slowly and mostly without major conflict. Once you start thinking that the Bible might be a human book describing God’s interactions with us from our perspective, anything in it might be wrong.

That is very troubling to many people. It seems safer to hold the line, and claim that the whole Bible is accurate in everything it says.

2) In a lot of theology, particularly popular Protestant theology, Jesus is the answer to a specific problem: We are fallen people, due to Adam’s sin. We inherit at least a fallen nature, if not actual guilt from Adam’s sin, and are thus unacceptable to God. We need salvation if we are to avoid hell. That’s what Christ is for. Without the Fall, Christ’s death seems pointless, since the problem it is designed to fix isn’t there.

Evolution probably destroys the Fall. Catholics have at times tried to say that even though we evolved, at some point a specific pair sinned, and all modern people are descendants of them. But this seems unlikely. There’s also the problem that it’s unlikely that our pre-human ancestors were sinless, which makes the whole Gen 3 narrative fall apart.

———————

I think once we accept scientific and historical evidence, there are serious challenges to a lot of Christian theology. I don’t think it challenges what Jesus was actually trying to do, but it certainly makes a lot of traditional theology hard.

I don’t see Jesus saying that everyone starts out as unacceptable to God. He saw lost sheep, who have to repent. But OT theology in general saw Jews as part of the covenant. When they sinned they needed to repent, but they didn’t start out damned. Later Jewish thought became more inclusive of non-Jews, and I think Jesus followed that approach.

The problem with this is once you don’t think people start out damned you have to ask what Jesus’ death was about. At that point you have to look at the atonement. Traditional Protestant theology takes one view of Jesus’ death, that he took the punishment that was due to us, and without it we would have to be punished ourselves with hell. But historically this wasn’t the only or even the earliest idea. Before Augustine’s time, Christians didn’t necessarily think everyone started off damned. Other ideas of Christ’s death ranged from it being an inspiration to it being a trick that caused Satan to overstep his bounds (by taking an innocent life) and lose his rights.

If you take seriously the idea that Christ was God made flesh, we might consider the idea that his death for us makes visible the character that God always had. He always loved us, and was always willing to go to extremes to help us, even if in loving us he suffered with us and on our behalf.

"There’s also the problem that it’s unlikely that our pre-human ancestors were sinless, which makes the whole Gen 3 narrative fall apart."

Well, it could be that before a certain point in evolution, sin wasn't possible due to the ability to make moral choices not yet being present. So can animals sin?? So at some point between a monkey ancestor and us the moral ability required developed, and its probably fair to say that from that point on, selfish moral choices began to be made.

So, just speculating, it may be that as an evolutionary line or tree, we are fallen and that by Jesus death, as a perfect example of the highest form of that evolutionary line or tree, the moral failures (ie now sins) are able to be forgiven. In the age to come, God will resurrect us but with our moral compasses fixed and corrected, something that is beyond the ability of a mechanism like evolution to ever get correct.

 

[Sorn]

This has been hinted at by several postings, but there are a couple of serious consequences.

1) If evolution is true, most likely Genesis 1 - 3 are not historical. There are various arguments about how a day may be an age, but in fact most people who accept evolution take Gen 1 - 3 at face value, and think they’re wrong, at least as history. But the moment you accept that the Bible may be wrong, there are other questions: Modern archaeologists generally don’t think anything before maybe the time of the kings is accurate. In specific, the Exodus as described didn’t happen. In fact the current understanding is that the people who became Israel largely originated in the hill country in Palestine, and moved into the cities slowly and mostly without major conflict. Once you start thinking that the Bible might be a human book describing God’s interactions with us from our perspective, anything in it might be wrong.

That is very troubling to many people. It seems safer to hold the line, and claim that the whole Bible is accurate in everything it says.

2) In a lot of theology, particularly popular Protestant theology, Jesus is the answer to a specific problem: We are fallen people, due to Adam’s sin. We inherit at least a fallen nature, if not actual guilt from Adam’s sin, and are thus unacceptable to God. We need salvation if we are to avoid hell. That’s what Christ is for. Without the Fall, Christ’s death seems pointless, since the problem it is designed to fix isn’t there.

Evolution probably destroys the Fall. Catholics have at times tried to say that even though we evolved, at some point a specific pair sinned, and all modern people are descendants of them. But this seems unlikely. There’s also the problem that it’s unlikely that our pre-human ancestors were sinless, which makes the whole Gen 3 narrative fall apart.

———————

I think once we accept scientific and historical evidence, there are serious challenges to a lot of Christian theology. I don’t think it challenges what Jesus was actually trying to do, but it certainly makes a lot of traditional theology hard.

I don’t see Jesus saying that everyone starts out as unacceptable to God. He saw lost sheep, who have to repent. But OT theology in general saw Jews as part of the covenant. When they sinned they needed to repent, but they didn’t start out damned. Later Jewish thought became more inclusive of non-Jews, and I think Jesus followed that approach.

The problem with this is once you don’t think people start out damned you have to ask what Jesus’ death was about. At that point you have to look at the atonement. Traditional Protestant theology takes one view of Jesus’ death, that he took the punishment that was due to us, and without it we would have to be punished ourselves with hell. But historically this wasn’t the only or even the earliest idea. Before Augustine’s time, Christians didn’t necessarily think everyone started off damned. Other ideas of Christ’s death ranged from it being an inspiration to it being a trick that caused Satan to overstep his bounds (by taking an innocent life) and lose his rights.

If you take seriously the idea that Christ was God made flesh, we might consider the idea that his death for us makes visible the character that God always had. He always loved us, and was always willing to go to extremes to help us, even if in loving us he suffered with us and on our behalf.

"If you take seriously the idea that Christ was God made flesh, we might consider the idea that his death for us makes visible the character that God always had. He always loved us, and was always willing to go to extremes to help us, even if in loving us he suffered with us and on our behalf."

I do like this idea, that one of the reasons that God chose the death on the cross as the way to redemption was because it also showed us just how far God was prepared to go, how much He loved us.

 

[coffee4u]

My lack of belief in gods has nothing to do with the Theory of Evolution. It isn't a foundation of my worldview.
If you were able to disprove Evolution, as interesting as that would be, it wouldn't cause me to believe in gods.

I think you would agree that really there are only two main choices for the world we see, either a creator or pure naturism?
As an atheist, naturism must be true since God and the supernatural is not an option for you. You can't be an atheist while believing in a creator. Evolution must strengthen your view since by that a person can easily believe only in naturism, that the world creates itself through natural forces.
I know you say you wouldn't believe in God or gods, but it might cause you to doubt.
If society as a whole held to creation, if creation was the prevailing thing taught you might have a different view.

But that wasn't really your main question which you didn't respond to my reply about.
So to sum it up, no death before sin is the main reason I am anti evolution.

 

[stevil]

Well, it could be that before a certain point in evolution, sin wasn't possible due to the ability to make moral choices not yet being present. So can animals sin?? So at some point between a monkey ancestor and us the moral ability required developed, and its probably fair to say that from that point on, selfish moral choices began to be made.

From a secular perspective (I'm not qualified to do theology), the origin's story of humans becoming a moral agent, is quite an interesting one.

It shows that perhaps the authors recognised that humans are specially conflicted with making moral choices and yet other animals don't appear to be so.

The story suggests a turning point must have happened in the development of humans over time which then raised human's above the other animals in terms of becoming to have moral agency.

Eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (or right and wrong) seems to be metaphorical, and just shows that the authors of the story consider that there was a point in time (or a process of steps over time) where humans eventually came to develop an understanding that some things are right and some things are wrong and that this elevated humans to a higher level of consciousness which is somewhat unique in the animal kingdom, and that this became the starting point of the ongoing tussle that humans have with self interest vs doing the "right" thing.

 

[stevil]

I think you would agree that really there are only two main choices for the world we see, either a creator or pure naturism?

No, I don't see "a creator" as being a viable option. It's a pretty outlandish claim and doesn't have anything close to evidence to support any of it.

As an atheist, naturism must be true since God and the supernatural is not an option for you.

There is no evidence in support of anything supernatural. But even if we go with only natural causes, evolution might have some other natural alternatives (although I don't know what they would be).
I do recognise that life does give the impression of a design, and I can see how many people would have made that leap, before the scientific method was developed.
It is really quite incredible to consider that complex organisms have come about via a simple process of decent with random modification and non random selection pressures.
Its a fascinating topic for sure. But my lack of belief in gods has nothing to do with the ToE.
Remember from an atheist perspective it is acceptable to not know how things came about. We don't need to have the answers to mysteries. We don't consider a "god of the gaps" position to be a particularly honest way to decide how things came to be.

You can't be an atheist while believing in a creator.

Sure, but I don't particularly care that I am an atheist. It isn't something that I am proud of. I won't believe or disbelieve something purely because it supports an atheist worldview. I am open to evidence.

Evolution must strengthen your view since by that a person can easily believe only in naturism, that the world creates itself through natural forces.

No, I find evolution fascinating, but I don't care if it supports a "no god" worldview. In fact I recognise that there are hundreds of millions of Christians who accept that Evolution is truth, so in that regard I don't believe that ToE disproves even the Christian god.

I know you say you wouldn't believe in God or gods, but it might cause you to doubt.

No, it wouldn't cause me to doubt. If evolution were disproven, I certainly would be wondering then how did these various life forms come to be, how come they appear to be evolved when they are not?
I'd be interested to see what other explainations scientists discover. But for the time being I would be comfortable in saying that "I don't know" how the various life forms came to be. Just as I am comfortable right now in saying that "I don't know" how the universe came to be.

If society as a whole held to creation, if creation was the prevailing thing taught you might have a different view.

If I was born into a strongly Christian creation family and society it is conceivable that I would also hold Christian creation beliefs.

But that wasn't really your main question which you didn't respond to my reply about.
So to sum it up, no death before sin is the main reason I am anti evolution.

I don't want to get into theology, I'm not qualified.
I can't personally conceive of an environment where animals have sharp teeth and claws and poison fangs and such and that there is no death at all. It doesn't make any sense to me.
Without death the animals could walk through fire, jump off cliffs, walk along the ocean floor to get to other places. Animals wouldn't need to eat, they wouldn't need teeth or stomachs or legs or arms, they would have no needs at all. It really just doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The moment you accept that both the Bible and traditional Christian beliefs are sometimes wrong, everything becomes a judgement call, and based purely upon evidence I think it’s hard to be 100% sure that there’s really a God that cares for us. You also open the door to things like having to accept gay people. It’s pretty clear that for many Christians that is unthinkable.

I was surprised to hear the Archbishop of Canterbury openly admit to such doubts - and that he keenly supports LGBTQ+ lifestyles... It takes all sorts

 

[stevil]

But that wasn't really your main question which you didn't respond to my reply about.
So to sum it up, no death before sin is the main reason I am anti evolution.

I did actually attempt to address this topic, in post 45 in this thread.

Here is what I wrote
"I don't want to get too much into discussion about the contents of the bible. I haven't read it, I have a very poor understanding of the Christian position on the bible.

I have had people talk about the concept of "second death".
As a way to explain why in the bible God said to Adam and Eve that if they ate the fruit then they would die on that day, and the snake told them they would not die. In the story Adam and Eve ate the fruit, but they did not die on that day.

Also Jesus death and resurrection was supposed to be a sacrificial to pay the debt of our sins. And yet people continue to die to this day.

Sooooo, is it possible that the idea of original sin bringing death into the world was more with regards to this concept of "second death"?????

Sorry if I sound silly here. Clearly I don't know what I am talking about."

 

[Larniavc]

This is the very definition of instinct.

No it isn't. Humans have instincts.