Thoughts on Evolution and its compatibility/incompatibility with Christianity?

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Inquisitor

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Mar 17, 2022
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#41
Hi Jocund. Ok, fair enough. I agree there are many Theistic Evolutionists and Christians who believe God used evolution, and of course that statement wouldn't apply to them.

But most of the professional evolutionists, including the one cited in that Creation.com article, do say expressly, that part of their motivation for adhering to evolution is avoiding God.

"As one leading evolutionist has said, they are committed to materialist explanations (i.e. excluding God) ‘… no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying … for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.’4 ...

4. Lewontin, R., ‘Billions and billions of demons’, The New York Review, 9 January 9 1997, p. 31."
Science deals with the observable, measurable, testable, reality that we exist within. Science is unable to define the existence of spiritual entities or spiritual realms. The domain of scientific research and understanding, has nothing to do with the existence of God.

God cannot be observed or measured nor even defined.

God is accessed by faith, and salvation is granted on the basis of that belief in Jesus.

Science assumes that we can know by observation and science knows nothing, ultimately.

Jesus is the true knowledge and the only knowledge that ever mattered.
 

oyster67

Senior Member
May 24, 2014
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#45
Lots of things evolve every day (like this thread), but Creation was created in one literal week by One omnipotent Creator.
 

HealthAndHappiness

Well-known member
Jul 7, 2022
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Almost Heaven West Virginia
#47
Is there a specific passage you would like to discuss?
I was raised to believe in God, but was also highly indoctrinated in Darwinism. My preschool library book from a library in Washington State was a child's version of the On the Origin of Species : THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE

The last part was left off of the title as I recall, but I picked it out because I liked monkeys. 😄
The next 12 most influential years of my life entailed many teachers drilling this into my little sponge like brain. In college biology one professor spent an entire 1 hour 15 minutes making his best case for the"fact" that we were evolved from earthworms. I hope Dr Blades got saved before he left this world. Last I saw his name was in an obituary.

When I trusted Jesus as my Savior, I didn't even consider these things at the time. When I started reading the Bible I had to make a decision as to whether to trust the entire Bible or just the gospels. One of my pastors tried to reconcile both evolution with the Bible. Perhaps I'll have time tomorrow to discuss that with you, or a particular passage. Unfortunately, I must wrap things up soon and get to bed. My day starts well before daylight tomorrow. Have a good night.
 
Jul 14, 2019
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#48
God created man just as he is now. The earth if you count the ages of the Bible geneologies from Adam to Christ is about 8,000 years old. Go with the Bobble not science. Christian scientist have already disprove carbon dating. It's really just the spirit of antitrust. We were created in God's image not a monkey flinging poo.
 

Inquisitor

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#49
Doesn't the first day begin at the beginning? :unsure:
No because the morning and evening had not occurred.

Genesis 1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness He called “night.” And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

Then God said let there be light. You can't have evening and morning until there is light. Thus the earth exists before the first day.

Mwhaaaaaa, me winner.
 

Inquisitor

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#50
On the fixed kinds.. I mean that in the bible you have an early set of seperate types of animals.. like a cattle type.. horse type.. etc.. and then variations on these as you see now. But you don't have a whale evolving into a cow, or a fish to a man. You've got man as a seperate species to apes.. with variation in mankind, not apes becoming men.. or a seperate line from other apes becoming men.

As to the catastrophic changes.. the flood is the main one. But there are also many disasters and changes in nature that uniformitarianism that gets coupled with macro evolution don't really address.

I think many scientists changed their way of thinking to account for catastrophes and disasters.. calling it 'punctuated equilibrium'.. they still had long ages.. but in between ages.. these periods of upheaval and catastrophe. This is getting closer to the bible account anyway.
I liked your post. You are not accurate though.

Science believes a fish evolved into a land creature a long, long time ago. Then this land creature evolved into a mammal. But this mammal changed it's mind and returned to the ocean again. Which is the story of the evolution of the whale. So a whale may have become a cow during it's evolutionary journey.

There are different viewpoints within the evolutionary theory as there are in cosmology. Some believe in a very rapid evolution of species and others favor a more gradual evolution. No one really knows because all we have is the fossil record. Make of it what you will.
 
Sep 15, 2019
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#52
Is that a reliable way to calculate the age of humanity or the age of the nation of Israel.

The subject of the Old Testament appears to be the history of the nation of Israel, not the history of civilization.
Are you trying to argue that Adam and Eve were Israelites? One of their descendants was Israel (Jacob), but Adam and Eve were not Israelites. The Old Testament gives the history of man - through Israel - but God didn't begin with Israel - He began with Adam, an ancestor all men share.

The number of generations from Adam to Abraham is approximately 20 generations. But Abraham eventually travels to Egypt and Egypt is a booming empire. Abraham probably lived around 2100 BC. Yet Egypt has a history of Neolithic settlements as far back as 6000 BC.
So people were moving and settling long before 6000 BC.
I suggest that you have based your assertion on an incorrect assumption - "Egypt has a history of Neolithic settlements as far back as 6000 BC" - and come to the wrong conclusion. 20 generations, when people were living nearly 1000 years, is plenty of time to set up a settlement. A single couple could generate nearly a whole town of people within 1000 years. Imagine what taking into account their offspring would do. Easy to envisage multitudes of settlements within 1000 years.

As I said before, the genealogy in the Old Testament is an overview, not an exact record of generations.
Have you got proof of this? My view is that the scriptures are the inspired word of God (who was there), and infallible. Therefore, I take what the Old Testament says as the more reliable account when compared to what someone else claims, who was not there.
 
Oct 12, 2021
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#53
There is nothing in the Bible that states that species can't change kinds.

In the OT: Clay was turned into mankind. Moses's staff was wood (piece of a tree) that was transmutated by God into a snake.

In the NT: humans become a new creature in Christ. Rocks can be raised as sons of Abraham.

Transmutation is a Biblically supported concept. "Kinds" can be changed. Why would we assume God couldn't do that?



Evolution is not considered to take place at a constant rate of change (e.g. the Cambrian explosion).

I'm interested in your concept here though. Biblically, what catastrophic change do you consider to be incompatible?

Yes, you could have a model of evolution that could be ruled out, but the topic we should be exploring in detail is the principle of evolution itself, not a particular model of it.

We should challenge our assumptions about things, and a common set of assumptions I'm used to seeing surrounds the creation account and Noah's flood. It's the same type of assumption that erroneously leads people to say that Adam and Eve specifically ate an apple (thereby enforcing a belief that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was an apple tree)



Salvation is the more important topic.

Creation via evolution vs spontaneous creation is an argument about the methods God used to create everything, and to some extent it is a conversation about OT exegesis and translation.

Is it "Adam" or "mankind"? Are they literal days or figurative days? What process is actually being described by dust from the ground being made into the form of man? Etc.

The reality is that the so-called ‘science’ underpinning ‘Deep Time’ i.e. billions of years is highly flawed and is based on 3 false assumptions in radiometric dating methods.

The House of Darwin needs must have ‘Deep Time’ as a leg on which to stand because No Deep Time and the House of Darwin crashes to the ground and with it all its associated concepts such as microbes to microbiologists

creation.com/radiometric-dating-age-of-earth



In Brief

For Laymen — A summary of the technical article ‘Radiometric dating and the age of the Earth’ (pages 41–44 this issue)*

4.5 Billion Years
Before 1955, it was popular to believe the age of the earth was only 3 billion years. During 1955 an evolutionary scientist by the name of Patterson2 claimed the age of the earth to be the same as that of meteorites. These he dated at 4.5 billion years. He believed that the meteorites were left-over remains of material dating from the time of formation of the earth and other planets. The value of 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth is now the popular belief used by most evolutionary scientists. This is accepted in spite of the 1972 research by a scientist named Gale21, showing that Patterson’s beliefs about where the lead in meteorites came from, was provably wrong. Gale showed that there was simply too much lead in meteorites to claim that it formed from uranium. Much of the lead had originally been in the meteorite. Therefore, despite the claims in school books, university lectures, and in the media, meteorites and the earth are not ‘proven’ to be 4.5 billion years old.

Edited Data
Such widespread beliefs as the 4.5 billion years of age, and the infallibility of the radiometric dating methods, are unfortunately kept in the public view by two rules agreed upon by many scientists, i.e. if a date disagrees with 4.5 billion years it must be wrong-and if dates do not fit the expected view of evolutionary history, they are simply edited out of any data published.
References to these practices are given in the Technical Article under the headings, Concordant Data and Selective Publication.21–34
 
Oct 12, 2021
165
21
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#54
The reality is that the so-called ‘science’ underpinning ‘Deep Time’ i.e. billions of years is highly flawed and is based on 3 false assumptions in radiometric dating methods.

The House of Darwin needs must have ‘Deep Time’ as a leg on which to stand because No Deep Time and the House of Darwin crashes to the ground and with it all its associated concepts such as microbes to microbiologists
creation.com/radiometric-dating-age-of-earth


In Brief
For Laymen — A summary of the technical article ‘Radiometric dating and the age of the Earth’ (pages 41–44 this issue)*

4.5 Billion Years
Before 1955, it was popular to believe the age of the earth was only 3 billion years. During 1955 an evolutionary scientist by the name of Patterson2 claimed the age of the earth to be the same as that of meteorites. These he dated at 4.5 billion years. He believed that the meteorites were left-over remains of material dating from the time of formation of the earth and other planets. The value of 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth is now the popular belief used by most evolutionary scientists. This is accepted in spite of the 1972 research by a scientist named Gale21, showing that Patterson’s beliefs about where the lead in meteorites came from, was provably wrong. Gale showed that there was simply too much lead in meteorites to claim that it formed from uranium. Much of the lead had originally been in the meteorite. Therefore, despite the claims in school books, university lectures, and in the media, meteorites and the earth are not ‘proven’ to be 4.5 billion years old.

Edited Data
Such widespread beliefs as the 4.5 billion years of age, and the infallibility of the radiometric dating methods, are unfortunately kept in the public view by two rules agreed upon by many scientists, i.e. if a date disagrees with 4.5 billion years it must be wrong-and if dates do not fit the expected view of evolutionary history, they are simply edited out of any data published.
References to these practices are given in the Technical Article under the headings, Concordant Data and Selective Publication.21–34
 

arthurfleminger

Well-known member
Aug 18, 2021
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#55
I'm a Christian and believe in all that Jesus taught and in the Scripture, both Old and New Testaments. And I also believe in evolution. I believe that evolution is the way God chose and that God directed the evolution in all it's aspects.
 

oyster67

Senior Member
May 24, 2014
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#57
Doesn't the first day begin at the beginning?
No because the morning and evening had not occurred.
God has no beginning. Genesis tells us about the beginning of heaven, earth, and light. The first day is the first Day. The first day did have a morning. God created heaven, earth, and light on the first day and this was the beginning spoken of in Genisis 1:1. If God had created light on the second day, then the Bible would have stated such.

Genesis 1

1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
 

Inquisitor

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Mar 17, 2022
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#58
God has no beginning. Genesis tells us about the beginning of heaven, earth, and light. The first day is the first Day. The first day did have a morning. God created heaven, earth, and light on the first day and this was the beginning spoken of in Genisis 1:1. If God had created light on the second day, then the Bible would have stated such.

Genesis 1

1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 3And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 4And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. 5And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
Are you proposing that the earth did not exist before God created light?

The text states the earth was formless and void before God said, 'let there be light'.

Your assuming that the earth was created after God said, 'let there be light', which it was not.

There is a sequential order that God established in Genesis 1 and God did that for a reason.

Mankind arrives on the sixth day, mankind is late in the chronology and that is for a reason also.

I cannot interpret Genesis in a literal way otherwise, I will miss some of the revelation of the Christ.
 

oyster67

Senior Member
May 24, 2014
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#59
Are you proposing that the earth did not exist before God created light?
Do you know what "void" means? A void is a nothingness. Let go of you Scofieldian Gap theory and believe the Bible...
Genesis 2:4
“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
 

Inquisitor

Well-known member
Mar 17, 2022
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#60
Do you know what "void" means? A void is a nothingness. Let go of you Scofieldian Gap theory and believe the Bible...
Genesis 2:4
“These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,
I translate 'void' as void of lifeforms.