And personally I an agnostic about how old the earth is within the confines of understanding of time - BUT I do not believe man descended from ape.
My belief is Adam was made from the dust. Period. AND there was a flood that engulfed the world with Noah’s family spared, etc...
This puts me at odds with more flexible Catholic teaching, which is a sort of theistic evolution framework — but I appreciated the flexibility and room for discussion between all viewpoints in the classroom nonetheless.
but I appreciated the flexibility and room for discussion between all viewpoints in the classroom nonetheless.
/
You appreciate discussions that have theories presented as fact ?
How educational of you .
God’s time is not Human’s time.
The only thing we disagree on is how long ago it was (thousands of years ago vs billions of years ago) and how long it took (a week vs a series of long eras). The few times I hear theistic evolution tends to come from the "church" leaders who promote modern day hedonism.
When my kids went to Catholic high school, I checked their history book - it affirmed evolution.
I’ve always like the Orthodox Jewish explanation.
Adam was a fully adult male at the time of creation.
If you asked a doctor how old Adam was on the date of creation, the doctor would correctly say “34” (or whatever the age is). He’d be correct, medically speaking.
If you asked a Rabbi, he’d say, “one day old”. He’d be correct, theologically speaking.
God exists outside time and space. Both are perfectly acceptable and compatible.
To me, evolutionists saying evolution disproves God is a bit like saying the recipe disproves the chef.
No, that’s just how people believe the chef did it.
There is no tenet in evolutionary theory (!) that says man descended from apes. The claim is that the two have a common ancestor. Not thrying to sway you...just sayin’.
Nevertheless, I object to the fundamentalist Protestant approach in that it seeks to find and magnify points of apparent friction between their view of Scripture and science and to then demand an endorsement of Scripture. This is wrong-minded in that it deliberately puts faith in opposition to reason and science. Eventually, many of the Protestant teens who adopt Christ based on a strict literal reading of the Bible fall away as they learn that science has the stronger argument based on facts.
Was Adam made from dust? The Protestant view insists that this is literally true instead of being metaphorically and theologically true. Was there a universal flood? There was for Noah's world as he knew it, but there is no credible evidence of a universal, all-consuming flood across the world.
Notably, if the story of Noah's flood is pared down to its most credible essentials, there may be a valid scientific explanation in the form of one or more meteorite impacts that caused an especially devastating regional tsunami in the Persian Gulf. For the Protestant view, it is an uncomfortable fact that the Israelites picked up a pre-existing local story of Noah's flood during their Babylonian captivity.
If the Flood was truly universal and global, where are the stories and evidence of such universal flooding in Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere? Why is the Biblical account set in the Persian Gulf?
The most coherent explanation for these anomalies is that the people of Israel adopted a compelling account of a devastating regional flood and saw it as having deeper religious significance. The story was then shaped to fit that purpose and added to the Bible.
Is man descended from apes? From fossils to DNA, the connection between man and apes is factually well-established. Yet that physical connection does not contradict or diminish the profound difference between man and ape in the human soul and in man's unique relationship with God. Those cannot be explained by evolution.
Notably, modern physics treats consciousness as integral to existence. The sum of accounts of near death experience lend credence to the view of the human soul as surviving death in a spiritual realm under the guidance and control of of a loving universal spiritual power. God the Father, if you will.
It helps to recognize and keep in mind that the Bible is a literary and religious text of the highest order but is not a scientific text. With that in mind, the best approach is to seek to harmonize faith and science, not set them as opponents.
No scientist says man descended from apes. What they said is thy had a common ancestor in the past. Big difference.