God and Evolution

Stands to Reason ^ | Gregory Koukl

[f.Christian]

Evolution is a dirty needle...aids---mad bone-fossil disease!

[Osinski]

Yeah, that was kinda funny.

But, what I really wanted to say is that the idea that this "creationism" is somehow exclusive of "evolution" is difficult to comprehend given all the findings to date. I like the "Sons of God" impregnating the "Daughters of Men" theory myself.

[ppaul]

Note that fossils separated by more than about a hundred thousand years cannot show anything about how a species arose. Think about it: there could have been a smooth transition, or the species could have appeared suddenly, but either way, if there aren't enough fossils, we can't tell which way it happened.
(from the informative link you supplied)

There ain't no evidence otherwise - but we sure cannot accept that humans were created, can we?
We gotta believe in evolution.
To do otherwise would not be "scientific".
We'd have to admit that there is a God.
That is unacceptable to us highly learned, evolved, minds.

[balrog666]

Praise to God and his glory.

And his inventions of polio, syphilis, and mad cow disease. /satire

[spqrzilla9]

If you believe humans "evolved" from pond slime billions of years ago, rather than being uniquely created as human beings by the Creator - you've got a hell of a lot more faith than I have. And a bleak hereafter.

Amusingly, you are the egotistical and arrogant one since you are claiming that one has to match your beliefs for salvation. Jesus didn't require one to renounce evolution to be saved.

[Osinski]

"Well, excuse me Mr. Conceited Intellectual Giant Elitist."

Boys, I think we got ourselves a new slogan.

[ppaul]

Jesus didn't require one to renounce evolution to be saved.

No he didn't.
He said we just need to believe him.
You cannot believe him and believe he didn't create us.
That's calling him a liar.

[RonF]

You're setting up a straw man here. "In-Fisherman" is hardly an authoritative source for evolutionary theory.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

The evolution versus creation argument is mental masturbation. Who cares?

The only theological issue of importance for Christians is whether or not Jesus Christ redeemed us by dying on the cross for our sins and conquered death by rising from the grave three days later.

If He did, then all this other stuff is irrelevant.

If He didn't, then all this other stuff is irrelevant.

[general_re]

That handle is still available for interested freepers ;)

[Salgak]

Uh, I hate to pop your halo,but. . .

If you look back to Genesis, you see a historical record that parallels the findings of astronomers, astrophysicists, geologists, and biologists. In fact, that was the masters thesis of a buddy of mine when he was in seminary. His argument was this: Religion and Science are NOT at odds: Religion is about the question "Why", and Science about "How". . .

With all the physical evidence in place, either one of two things happened.

(1) God created the world and the universe "x" number of thousands of years ago, and made it "old". But by doing so, He had to lie to us in the physical record, to get us to solve the riddles he put in place as to how the world worked, i.e. science.

--OR--

(2) God created the Universe in such a way that he planned it to turn out the way it did. "Let there be light" becomes the Big Bang, and all the rest occurred along planned, pre-programmed lines.

Now, take whichever view you want, but I find scenario two FAR more awe-inspiring. But then, as an engineer, I see God as the Ultimate Engineer and Designer.

Scenario one is like placing the balls on a pool table in a particular pattern. Scenario two is going from the racked balls on the pool table, and getting them to that pattern with a single shot to set it all off. . . .

[Dimensio]

We gotta believe in evolution.
To do otherwise would not be "scientific".
We'd have to admit that there is a God.

Ignoring for a moment that this is a false dilemma, did you have a specific "God" in mind, or were you just referring to a general "god"? If the former, to which God were you referring and if the latter, what traits would be present in this "God"?

[WriteOn]

Einstein: "God doesn't play dice."

When you understand the tremendous depth of this statement, you'll understand the poverty of both evolution and creationism qua theory.

[spqrzilla9]

Jesus didn't claim that.

[Dimensio]

The tremendous depth of Einsten's dice quote? He was expressing his personal doubt with quantum theory. Where is the depth in that?

[ppaul]

God has revealed his "tarits" to mankind in the Scriptures - the Old and New testaments.
You don't have to believe it.
In fact - you cannot, unless God reveals it to you first.

[Khepera]

Here is the way I see it. I have studied the fossil record in College. I was very interested in Geology and Archeology and studied the fossil and Geological artifacts at some length. I just have a different perspective.

The universe looks old. Exactly as it would look if it's really old. As if it has one, specific, consistent history. As if it has been expanding for fifteen billion years from a single point. As if light has been traveling through it, lensing through gravitational fields, and as if events hundreds of thousands of light-years away have sent light at right angles to us, hundreds of thousands of years ago, which reflected off other objects and then came toward us. We can use Euclid's geometry to show how far away these objects are and how old their light is.

The Earth looks old. Exactly the way it would look if it's really old. As if it's been around for four-and-a-half billion years, and was hot and molten for the first half-billion of it, as if the continents have been gradually moving for the entire time, and as if the oceans and rivers and streams and tectonic flows have been shaping it, slowly, for all that time. As if Africa and South America have been receding from each other for millions of years, as the deposits have built up on the continents and the sea floor has spread, with the magnetic iron and nickel in the volcanic deposits recording the Earth's changing magnetic field, exactly in time with the changes we have been measuring. It looks just as if radioactive isotopes have been here, changing into their stable daughter elements in accord with the laws of physics, changing the ratios of those daughter isotopes in exact proportion to the elements (not the isotopes) found in the rock, just exactly as if they've been doing so for hundreds of millions, or billions, of years.

Life on Earth looks old, exactly like it would be if it's really old, as if it's been here for almost the entire history of the Earth, as if it's been changing all that time, with new species appearing, each similar to something that was here before. As if coral, dated to three hundred million years ago by the radioactive material in the rocks it was growing on, was showing four hundred days in a year, exactly matching the predicted slowing effect of lunar tides on the Earth's rotation over three hundred million years.

Life on Earth looks as if it's descended from a common ancestor. Exactly like it, just as if it's arranged in a nested hierarchy of similarity, instead of all the infinite other ways it could have been arranged, and as if the junk, noncoding DNA in each animal has exactly the same similarity relationship as the morphological hierarchy, like the errors in DNA, shared in the nested hierarchy, such as why humans and chimps and gorillas can get scurvy but all the other mammals can produce their own vitamin C.

Certainly God could have created the Earth six thousand years ago. Or last week, for that matter. But regardless of when it was created, it was created to look exactly as if it had all this history.

Thanks to a fellow Freeper named whatajoke who articulated this for me while clarifying my position.

[apochromat]

Is this topic extinct yet?

[ppaul]

"tarits" = "traits"
Sorry, my mistake.