Why is Christianity opposed to the theory of Evolution?

ecco · Oct 21, 2015

Hattington said:
Is it because it refutes the idea of Adam and Eve, original sin, and coming of Jesus?
Or are there any other reasons?

Why is Christianity opposed to the theory of Evolution?

Christianity isn't. People are. Everyone interprets holy scripture differently. It does not matter if the scripture is christian, muslim, hindu or whatever. Most people read some of scripture as allegory. Wherever the individual draws the line between literal truth and allegory is where the individual draws the line on science.

People who take a literal read of Genesis, will not, can not, accept evolution. People, including christian clergy, read Genesis as allegory and accept evolution.

Some people accept an old earth and accept evolution, but believe god started it all and perhaps tweaks it from time to time.

It really has little to do with jesus. If mainstream christianity had not chosen to incorporate the OT into christian scripture, we would not even be having this discussion.

Philosopher8659 · Oct 21, 2015

Hattington said:
Is it because it refutes the idea of Adam and Eve, original sin, and coming of Jesus?
Or are there any other reasons?

Christianity is not a person. Christianity is not opposed to anything.

Aman777 · Oct 21, 2015

JonFromMinnesota said:
Liberty University doesn't have a graduate or doctorate biology program. It doesn't publish scientific papers. So.....this would be like having your dentist look at your car. It's nonsensical.

Write your paper Aman and then have it peer reviewed in the relevant lines of study. Lets see if you can win this Nobel Prize!

You're right this is silly.....because modern humans have only been around for no less than 100,000 years. You should really stop making up numbers Aman unless you are willing to write a paper and have it reviewed. You're just blowing smoke until you do this.

Okay, Here is God's Literal Truth .

Adam was made the 3rd Day, the SAME Day as the Big Bang of our Cosmos. Gen 2:4 In fact, Adam was made first BEFORE the Big Bang. Gen 2:4-7 This means that Adam was made some 14 Billion years ago.

The first creatures to appear in the water on Planet Earth, came forth some 3.77 Billion years ago Gen 1:21 according to Science. The sons of God (prehistoric people) diverged from Chimps some 6 Million years ago.

Can you see that Humans are NOT the same as prehistoric people, no matter how much their skeletons look alike?

Heifer · Oct 21, 2015

Paul of Eugene OR said:
Well, yes, there is evidence for evolution. For example, one can see vestigial, useless bones in whale skeletons, easily explained as left overs from the evolutionary process, difficult to explain as the result of intelligent design process.

Do you think humans' finger nails are vestigial of claws? In other words, do you think humans' fingernails have no function? If all one thinks about humans' fingernails is in terms of the crude usefulness of claws, then of course one is going to assume that humans' fingernails are useless.

But, suppose that it actually is the case that human's fingernails have, say, mechanical uses. If such is the case, then we may have to be sensitive to the concept that the mechanical uses of human fingernails is merely less obvious than are the mechanical uses of claws.

One of many at least initially plausible hypothesis here is that which may reveal itself to our mind when we imagine what, in general, our fingertips (as mechanical focal points of our hands) would be like if we had no fingernails. I imagine that our fingertips would the be significantly less rigid.

Add to the rigidness that they actually have is that the leading edge of our fingernails may seem to have some fine-control function in picking up certain kinds of objects. In fact, my dad kept his fingernails cut back so short (because they painfully split when he let them grow even to a normal length) that the leading edge of his fingernails were precluded the possibility of such function, and I saw him many times struggle to gain an initial fingertip-hold of many kinds of fine objects.

JonFromMinnesota · Oct 21, 2015

Aman777 said:
Adam was made the 3rd Day, the SAME Day as the Big Bang of our Cosmos. Gen 2:4 In fact, Adam was made first BEFORE the Big Bang. Gen 2:4-7 This means that Adam was made some 14 Billion years ago.

Scripture is not evidence. Are you going to write your paper and submit it for peer review in relevant fields of study? Yes or no?

wilts43 · Oct 21, 2015

Why is Christianity opposed to the theory of Evolution?

It isn't!
Only a very small proportion of Christians (usually American Protestant fundamentalists) are hung up on this.
They do not comprise "Christianity"; they are a tiny, minority fringe group,..... but vocal & well-funded.

The question shows the American-centric nature of this forum.
The question includes a false presupposition.
It's a "When are you going to stop beating your wife question?"

LivingWordUnity · Oct 21, 2015

I believe that micro evolution is true and that it was created by God.

I don't believe that the theory of macro evolution is true.
.

nomadictheist · Oct 21, 2015

Some Christians choose to believe the Bible over the measurements and interpretation of people because they know that our limited scientific technology can only project any given natural history based on observable phenomena in the present.

Since, therefore, Creation and the flood are both supernatural phenomena that occurred in the past and can't be measured in the present, their effect on the picture of natural history cannot be measured or accounted for by science.

Other Christians choose to believe that the Bible is not, in fact, the inspired word of God, and people have gotten so smart over the last 300 years that we now realize there's no need for God.

iam13 · Oct 21, 2015

Listen evolution happens and it happens over shorter periods of times than many think. Look at the base definition of the word to start with:

noun
1. any process of formation or growth; development:
the evolution of a language; the evolution of the airplane.

That said, what we must concern ourselves with is "Spiritual Evolution". Ya. God, meet Darwin. Darwin, God. The best way to describe this is by an image God created through me a couple years back.

And as I suggest in the image, "the shift is about to hit the man" because we are on the steps of ushering in that 1000 years of peace Christ most notably spoke about. How we get there is our choice.

Christs mission was critical in that it showed us how to live, by what morals, by which standards, and such. I like to refer to this as, "Christ Style". We have had 2000 years to study, learn, and, "evolve" to a state closer to that of a life of Christ. This is ultimately each of your destiny's.... to use the good powers of your free will of choice, in all your choices, to do the right thing. Using your Christ style. If one begins to truly and clearly understand their free will of choice, and then they practice and use their choices correctly, they will come to realize that sin, is but a choice. And it is here that we must evolve to. This is what the Grand Master of Creation wants. And whether or not you know it, deep inside, it is what you want. So let us go forward, and spiritually evolve as individuals, and together. It is the reason we are here.

Spiritual (God) Evolution (Darwin) happens, but one must want it, and work hard towards it constantly. To walk the Jesus walk....

Heifer · Oct 21, 2015

Paul of Eugene OR said:
Yup. Now please consider the evidence for whale evolution presented by the vestigial hip bones. Don't forget to include acknowledgement of the discovery of other transitional whale species.

And you can explain why similarity isn't evidence.

Evidence means 'that which is evident'. Similarity is evident. But the issue is as to the cause of that evidence. This means that the issue is as to various conceivable theories constituting various conceivable explanations as to what is the actual cause. And not everyone is going to have the same exact frame of mind, which entails that the evidence does not suggest to all minds the same theory.

And if there is disagreement, on the part of different frames of mind, as to what the common evidence 'suggests', then, as they say, evidence does not interpret itself. In other words, there is no such thing as 'evidence of' qua belonging strictly to a given theory.

The word 'of' in the phrase 'evidence of' is an ambiguous function word. But, when the debate is hot, or when debate participants are naïve about the nature of evidence, this word easily is assumed to function exclusively in an exclusive capacity regarding one's one favored theory.

Loudmouth · Oct 21, 2015

LivingWordUnity said:
I believe that micro evolution is true and that it was created by God.

I don't believe that the theory of macro evolution is true.
.

That's like saying that you believe you can put one foot in front of the other, but think it impossible to move from the porch to the curb by repeating the process.

justlookinla · Oct 21, 2015

Loudmouth said:
That's like saying that you believe you can put one foot in front of the other, but think it impossible to move from the porch to the curb by repeating the process.

No it isn't. One has the support of scientific evidence (micro), while the other is based on a series of guesses and suppositions (macro).

LivingWordUnity · Oct 21, 2015

Loudmouth said:
That's like saying that you believe you can put one foot in front of the other, but think it impossible to move from the porch to the curb by repeating the process.

No, it's not.

Heifer · Oct 21, 2015

JonFromMinnesota said:
When we look at the evidence for evolution, it is not a guess that "it looks like vestigial bones" THEY ARE VESTIGIAL BONES.

Are you going to address it or not? I'm going to guess you won't.

I've addressed this in my own posts in this thread, page 6.

Heifer · Oct 21, 2015

Loudmouth said:
That's like saying that you believe you can put one foot in front of the other, but think it impossible to move from the porch to the curb by repeating the process.

Your analogy of 'evolution' to a simple cumulative process of walking is instructive. But many analogies easily are over-simplistic. Therefore, the issue here is not conceivability, but the nature of the thing(s) being analog-ized.

In fact, the opposite kind of analogy is likewise instructive: that of our jumping up eight inches with our own legs, and assuming (mistakenly), that we have the potential to accumulate such leg-jumping power that we can eventually jump ourselves into orbit.

Achieving orbit around Earth from Earth's ground is not something that any Earth animal is directly muscularly capable of. This, of course, does not preclude artificial means of our achieving orbit.

bhsmte · Oct 21, 2015

Heifer said:
Your analogy of 'evolution' to a simple cumulative process of walking is instructive. But many analogies easily are over-simplistic. Therefore, the issue here is not conceivability, but the nature of the thing(s) being analog-ized.

In fact, the opposite kind of analogy is likewise instructive: that of our jumping up eight inches with our own legs, and assuming (mistakenly), that we have the potential to accumulate such leg-jumping power that we can eventually jump ourselves into orbit.

Achieving orbit around Earth from Earth's ground is not something that any Earth animal is directly muscularly capable of. This, of course, does not preclude artificial means of our achieving orbit.

Maybe you can explain (in detail) what barriers that are in place, that prevent micro from becoming macro, over time.

Loudmouth · Oct 21, 2015

Heifer said:
Your analogy of 'evolution' to a simple cumulative process of walking is instructive. But many analogies easily are over-simplistic. Therefore, the issue here is not conceivability, but the nature of the thing(s) being analog-ized.

Macroevolution is the accumulation of consecutive microevolutionary events. It is exactly the same as taking another step. Here is a comparison of human and chimp DNA. You will notice that out of 420 bases that there are 11 differences. Can you show me which of those 11 differences could not be produced by a microevolutionary event?

It is no different when we compare the entire genome. Each difference is a single event. The overall difference is the accumulation of many single events over time.

In fact, the opposite kind of analogy is likewise instructive: that of our jumping up eight inches with our own legs, and assuming (mistakenly), that we have the potential to accumulate such leg-jumping power that we can eventually jump ourselves into orbit.

No one is saying that evolution produced a 2% difference between the chimp and human genomes in a single generation, as your analogy would have it. It happened over hundreds of thousands of generations which are the microevolutionary steps in the macroevolutionary process.

Wonkyu · Oct 21, 2015

Because God will not use "death" as part of his creation.
When you look at the evolution, you might have missed millions if not billions of death between those two different species. As we are accepting death as a natural path of life, death only entered the world after Adam sinned.

There is a fine line between creation by design, or evolution which has to have billions x billions of death of life.

Loudmouth · Oct 21, 2015

LivingWordUnity said:
No, it's not.

Yes, it is. Look at my post above. Can you point to a single difference between the human and chimp genomes that could not be produced by a microevolutionary event?

Loudmouth · Oct 21, 2015

Wonkyu said:
Because God will not use "death" as part of his creation.
When you look at the evolution, you might have missed millions if not billions of death between those two different species. As we are accepting death as a natural path of life, death only entered the world after Adam sinned.

There is a fine line between creation by design, or evolution which has to have billions x billions of death of life.

Then would you say that your rejection of evolution has nothing to do with the evidence, and everything to do with what you need to believe?

Why is Christianity opposed to the theory of Evolution?

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