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vossler said:Isn't it interesting how an atheist who's an evolutionist has such a clear understanding of the impact of evolution on Christianity.
vossler said:Or how about this one:
The day will come when the evidence constantly accumulating around the evolutionary theory becomes so massively persuasive that even the last and most fundamental Christian warriors will have to lay down their arms and surrender unconditionally. I believe that day will be the end of Christianity.
G. Richard Bozarth, The Meaning of Evolution, American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 30
By your reasoning he spent five times as long creating a universe as he did creating us, he wasted five days when he could have done it in one. He did as he saw fit, to assert that he wasted any amount of time is irrelevant and a fundamental misunderstanding of the eternal nature of God.QuantumFlux said:I'm sorry, did you read what I wrote? The 6 days signifies that he spent time on creation, that it wasnt just a whimsical decision to create the earth. billions of years shows that he spent more time building than he did loving. It not wasting 6 days, it had a purpose and 6 days is nothing compared to how long he has loved us.
First of all, please try to be less emotional when you debate. You'll find it beneficial to try to get along with people rather than constantly trying to belittle them.QuantumFlux said:I'm sorry, could you try taking that alittle more out of context? David was obviously talking about how short our lives are compared to the history of man, he most certainly was not talking about the life of the species of man. Is this how you read your bible? making it into whatever you want?
God did indeed create us to love him, but does he need that love? Was there really no love in the universe before we were created? Did God need to create us so he could show love? Is there no love within the Trinity? Please address this point. I have an excellent sermon by John Piper on this very subject which should shed some light on it for you.QuantumFlux said:Still trying to figure out if you actually read what I wrote, and also calls into question your biblical knowledge in this statement. God created us to love him, so what was there to love him before? The angels, I suppose but their love is little compared to ours.
I am perhaps labouring this point now but it is very important, there was no lack of love before Creation, God was able to express his love within the Trinity before he created us. Or are you really saying that God had to create us before he could love? Are you really saying that God was deficient in some way before he created us? Are you really saying that God was not perfect prior to Creation and had to make us?QuantumFlux said:Which means that there was nothing to love him back until mankind came along only several thousand years ago in a Billion year old universe. So we have billions of years where he is creating and creating and then at the very end he decides for a split second of geological existance there will be these creatures that love him.
Do the lions and vultures love God? Only man has that special relationship with God. The death of animals has no relevance here. Natural Selection is a work of divine genius imho, that's why scientists and engineers love genetic algorithms.QuantumFlux said:you may not have thought about the implications of love on evolution, but that certainly is what it is saying. "Survival of the fittest" was the order of things until mankind came. Where is the love in that again? Why God would create the universe to destroy itself is beyond me. He made the lions to kill and the vultures to pick the bones of the dead and rotting. It's hard for me to buy that God would want creation to be so violent and morbid, which he would have to want it considering according to evolution, he made it that way.
OK so there's a little more context for us. He is comparing the life of man to the Love of God which is from 'everlasting to everlasting' ie. eternal. He was not comparing the life of a man to the life of the species of man.
God did indeed create us to love him, but does he need that love? Was there really no love in the universe before we were created? Did God need to create us so he could show love? Is there no love within the Trinity? Please address this point. I have an excellent sermon by John Piper on this very subject which should shed some light on it for you.
Even taking Genesis as an historical account, there were things created before humans. Genesis 1 places the creation of humans on the 6th day, not the 1st, and even on that day, terrestrial animals were created before humans. On that basis, if Jesus' words are damaging to evolution, they also contradict Genesis.
QuantumFlux said:You say that God tells us that he used evolution because our genes tell us... I'm sorry, our genes don't look like a burning bush to me.
And our genes most certainly do not tell us that we came from any other animal. Genes are the building blocks of living things, if those are bricks in which to build a body, it would only make sense that animals with similar features would have similar genes, it doesn't prove that one came from the other.
I believe if God was speaking through them, the evidence would be more factual than assumption, but you can only assume that one came from the other based on similar genes, and I can just as easily assume that God just built us with similar genes because we have similar features.
What? I dont know, day 6 doesnt seem that far from the beginning when you consider how old the earth is. It is in no way contradictory, day 6 is practically the very beginning considering that the earth in my view is 2,190,000 days old. Creation didn't end on the 6th day, because he rested on the 7th. A rest suggests that he will return to creating. Contradictory? far from it, but it certainly is contradictory to evolution. (for those who missed it, we are talking about Mark 10:6, to bring you up to speed, I know the context is talking about marriage, but he does mention the creating in passing, and if evolution is true, this statement is very deceptive)
God spoke to Moses from the burning bush in order to commission him as the leader who would bring the Israelites out of Egypt. Did that require enlightening Moses about biology?
So where did your genes come from, if they are only building blocks? Why do we use genetic information as evidence of family relationships if they are manufactured and not inherited?
We know that genes are inherited. We know that similar genes indicate a family relationship. We know that this extends to species with common ancestors since speciation has been observed. I don't see any assumptions here. Only observations and accurate predictions. Would you please identify the specific assumptions you are referring to?
Jesus refers to the creation of humans--which took place at the very end of the last day of creation week--and calls it the "beginning of creation". So he clearly includes the tail end of creation, when humans were created, as the "beginning" of creation.
Now what difference does it make to an eternal God whether the creation of humans took place after 144 hours or after 13.7 billion years? Since God is eternal, the number of hours, days or years is irrelevant. Humans have been male and female since the beginning of creation, whatever the length of measured time was.
QuantumFlux said:Do you have any sort of sense of using an extreme to make a point? God used a burning bush that did not burn up to speak to Moses. When God gives a sign, he gives a something that its unmistakable to make his point. Genes are far from unmistakable.
This is the same arguement. You are using information that can tell where we are going to tell where we have been. Genes are genetic material, God create it as he did the rest of physics. He can just as easily make the animals as he said in genesis with the genetics they have today and then use the genetic process of passing genes down as you can see today.
Your assumption is just that, its not evidence.
Yes, we know that genes are inherited. However, similar genes do not always indicate a family relationship.
I, in part, have some similar genes with a gorrilla today over in africa, however, I have no family ties to that gorilla,
I am just build to some degree in a similar manor as it is.
You have no evidence that I am related to that gorilla, you assume I am based on the assumption that evolution is true.
I assume that gorilla's were created along with the rest of the mammals, seperate from humans, but with similar genes.
Your assumption is that gorillas and man have a common ancestor yet have no evidence for. Your evidence is an assumpiton that our genes show common ancestor, rather circular reasoning if you ask me.
You can make predictions on where we will go, but you cant predict where we have been.
I'm sorry, I guess I missed the part where he said "the beginning of creation week" no wait, it's not there.
Now your options are, he was being deceiving in what he said, or that he spoke the truth and that he made them in the beginning of creation, male and female.
There is no way to look at billions of years later and at the very end of that time line man evolves and consider man as being created at the beginning.
Maybe it didn't make a difference to God, but it did make a difference to people he spoke to. Jesus saying the man was created in the beginning of creation was understood to mean just that. Jesus was not one to be misleading, and a statement like the one in Mark 10:6 would be highly misleading his people if evolution were true.
No, Jesus was not being misleading. But perhaps you are not understanding what he was saying. I don't see anyway this text has any bearing one way or the other on evolution.
You are contradicting yourself. You just said "beginning" did not have to be "beginning of creation week". It can be any time, so long as it is part of the beginning of creation. Why can't billions of years be "the beginning"? Do you know when the end will be? Do you know how much of the whole those billions of years will be? When we look back from eternity, billions of years may be less than 1% of the whole.*
QuantumFlux said:Wow, holy crap....Let me try this one more time. How do you know we have common ancestors if you weren't there to see it?
How do you know that just because genes are inherited now, that that is the way it always has been? You don't, you assume. I assume that God created everything suddenly, therefore I assume that genes in the beginning were not inherited but created suddenly.
Perhaps everyone he was talking to didn't understand what he was saying. In fact, no one would understand what he was saying because man was not created in the beginning. That's not a misunderstanding, thats misleading.
According to evolution, mankind will either end or evolve in the next million years or so.
(emphasis added)In response to questions about my parable. I believe the earth is real and that God is the programmer in the parable, we are the players. We are confined by the physics that God made. It makes alot of sense that since our technology has progressed to where we can create virtual universes that we would mimic the way God created (obviously in a much more basic sense). We create worlds to look aged, we dont create the physics for a game and then expect them to evolve into a playable map, we create the world ready to be used. Do not mistake my parable as man having anything to do with the world's creation, God is the programmer of the world in this parable.
No, we are evolving.QuantumFlux said:So are we de-evolving?
This sentence makes no sense to me.What i am saying is, there is no more evidence that we evolved beyond their use than there is that they were a superior gene that degenerated until it didnt work anymore.
My proof of what?If you say evolution is your proof,
We observe evolution every day, talk to a bio student looking at DNA changes in fruit flies.thats seriously circular thinking. Pseudo genes prove evolution, what what proves Pseudo genes? well, evolution.... I dont buy that.
No, it doesn't.I seriously think you missed the point of what I was saying. yes, sometimes eyewitness has proven to be faulty, but that is completely irrelevant to what I said. In some cases, eye witness testimony shined a totally new light on the evidence they had and gave them a completely different scenerio than what they had without it.
Evolution makes an assumption that the layers of the earth were created over millions and billions of years.
Where?However, no one saw this happen. In fact, there is evidence to say they might have been created quickly,
That comes under the heading of slander.however, this evidence is thrown out because evolution is true....
Basically anything that says the layers were not created over billions of years is thrown out because we know that evolution is true.
I find that interesting since Egyptian artifacts were used to do the original calibration of C-14 decay curve.C14 carbon dating is a good example. Measuring the carbon was once thought to be extremely accurate, this has the historical professors in an uproar because basically all of their egyptian artifacts that they knew how old they were, c-14 was telling them other wise.
You have just demonstrated that you have next to no clue about what you are talking about.Finally they discovered that solar bombardment affect carbon levels, so then a bell curve was added to the calculation. The first assumption was that c-14 in itself was solid evidence, then it was c-14 with the bell curve is solid. Bad assumptions since we have no idea what else affects carbon levels.
Wishful thinking.vossler said:After coming across Bozarth's last quote I got to searching what else he says, here's another quote to muse:
Christianity is - must be! totally committed to the special creation as described in Genesis, and Christianity must fight with its full might, fair or foul against the theory of evolution.
G. Richard Bozarth, The Meaning of Evolution, American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 19
Are you claiming to have some evidence that he didn't decide to create humanity until he actually created humanity?QuantumFlux said:I'm not placing mankinds love above God's in anyway, but I am putting it above all of his other creations. Which means that there was nothing to love him back until mankind came along only several thousand years ago in a Billion year old universe. So we have billions of years where he is creating and creating and then at the very end he decides for a split second of geological existance there will be these creatures that love him.
stumpjumper said:I am wondering if Young Earth Creationists dismiss evolution on scientific grounds or solely because of a literal interpretation of the Bible.
...lets say for instance that God used natural processes to start life. We would probably be able to uncover the process that God used and then it would be natural even though it was initiated by the supernatural.
The literary context is determined based on the words within the passage itself to determine it's very meaning. Using the same example as above, the "was like a" indicated Jesus was speaking in parable to get a specific point across. And the parables were most always explained to the disiples.
Which leads to the big question for theistic evolutionists, where did sin orginate from? If there was always death since the beginning...then why did Adam and Eve's disobediance and rebellion in the Garden of Eden have such disasterous consequences to bring a curse over all of creation? What were those concequences? And why do we need a Savior from sin, death, and Hell when logically speaking, one shouldn't even be needed?
night2day said:Literary and literal cannot be counted as the same. Literalism holds to a strict way of reading despite the words in and around a given passage. The same cna be said of those who regard the Old and New Testaments as Myth.
However, going by evolution, it is then being stated there had to have been death before the Fall into sin which takes place in Genesis 3. Yet, death was not even present before the Fall occured.
And death had indeed always been natural. Yet, in many places the Scriptures state death is unnatural.
Which leads to the big question for theistic evolutionists, where did sin orginate from?
And why do we need a Savior from sin, death, and Hell when logically speaking, one shouldn't even be needed?
I don't assume. I follow the evidence. When I see evidence that at some point genes popped into existence without an ancestor to provide them, I will reconsider my stance. You, as you admit, do assume. But your assumption has no scientific basis. You are assuming that you know how God would choose to produce bio-diversity. I let the evidence tell me how God produced bio-diversity.
No, he said that from the beginning of creation God made humankind male and female. How is that saying that humankind was not created in the beginning?
No it doesn't. Apparently you have some incorrect ideas about how evolution works.
I hope this is something you have come up with yourself, because if there are Christian organizations teaching this sort of belief I would be even more deeply disturbed. What you have just articulated is a modern take on the ancient Hindu concept of maya. In other words, the world has no reality of existence in and of itself except as an abstraction dreamt up by God. This is a thoroughly un-Christian worldview (I do not make such accusations lightly) and has been used a lot recently to claim that quantum physics supports "ancient Eastern wisdom".
I don't think so. I don't know of anyone who identifies myth in the bible claiming that all the bible is mythical or that every passage must be read as myth unless we have reason to read it otherwise.
There had to be natural death in Eden if there was life in Eden. That is a consequence of life. Do you realize that if there was no death, the grounds of Eden would quickly be littered with undecaying excrement? Not great to walk around on with bare feet.
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