Posted on 04/07/2016 11:56:15 AM PDT by Heartlander
Whatever led to life on earth and kept it there, it had to (1) climb a probability hill and (2) not fall back down the same hill. #2 might be the thing that gets ignored the most in modern discussions of the topic. But the old-earth creationist Hugh Ross of www.reasons.org turns concerted attention to the topic.
Call me corny, but “Thou preservest man and beast” does no worse than anything that can be called scientific. And what’s more it posits a Creator and Sustainer Who is party to a personal relationship, which billions have found makes sense.
I don’t prove the scientist exists by putting him in a test tube. I prove the scientist exists through various personal interactions.
Some people get hung up over the creation details. I think if anything could answer this question it might be the modern theory of relativity. A God who moved swiftly enough could indeed complete what would appear to us as ages of work, in a personal time frame that meets or beats 24 hours. We don’t have any reason to believe that evening and morning would be forced to apply to the entire globe simultaneously (it doesn’t behave that way now) without some kind of metaphor being implied, such as an absence of spiritual manifestation and a presence of spiritual manifestation respectively.
I.e. if it could be any kind of “evolution” — it’s not Darwin’s.
Ever see a Darwin Fish? They make sense because evolution is religion.
I know... and when I’ve pressed a scientist on how we can know that some particular walking fish (they have shown up in many places) represents “THE” Darwinian adaptation that gave rise to our land vertebrates as we know them... he’ll tell us that almost certainly it wasn’t. Which means this thing called Darwinism has to be able to pull that rabbit out of its hat over and over again, not just once.
If any other kind of scientific theory (well ok, AGW doesn’t count) had to explain things like this, it would be counted as failed.
People just want to dodge the idea of miracle. But if they do, they find themselves in the midst of their own self-made miracle... of destruction.
I believe in miracle, which God in fact intended to be the norm.
Agreed - evolution involves secular magic...
I believe in miracle, which God in fact intended to be the norm.
People don't realize that the theory of evolution is much older than Darwin. It is the idea that man comes from matter and lower life forms.
Jer 2:27 Saying to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ And to a stone, ‘You gave birth to me.’ For they have turned their back to Me, and not their face. But in the time of their trouble They will say, ‘Arise and save us.’
Evolution is fancy techno jargin for idolatry.
And the history of theories of evolution even underlines this. The most audacious theories didn’t start with Charles Darwin, who appears to me to be a “fig leaf” with his very modest observations and proposals that have been blown up past anything he appears to think they merited. Such theories started with spiritualists who in effect posited that elves and sprites created life.
Forgetting history means forgetting a lot.
Yeah... even the bible seems to have anticipated that kind of mindset.
The idol has become more generalized now. People don’t quite take a chisel to rocks and worship that. They do, however, take a chisel to facts that we can see.
We need to keep conducting ourselves as Christians when dealing with such things, however. We can get so caught up in proving one thing wrong, that we don’t have any credibility at all in showing another thing right. God is more than “not idolatry.” So much, much more.
TOE was the gateway to abortion.
re: “Is it possible to believe in both creationism AND evolution?”
As Heartlander pointed out, definitions are crucial in answering your excellent question.
You must understand that there are two schools of thought on Biblical “creationism” - there is the “young” earth creationists that the earth and universe are only 6000 to 10,000 years old, and that the six days are literal 24 hour periods.
There is another Biblical school of thought where “creationism” means that God brought the universe into existence, brought life into existence - all out of nothing - that the general detail given in Genesis 1 that God specially created all living organisms and the entirety of the universe by His power over long periods of time - not, necessarily 6 literal 24 hour days, but rather “ages” of time.
This “old universe/earth” creationism does not hold to evolution in the sense of “macro-evolution” (the view that organisms evolved from single cell to mollusk, from mollusk to fish, from fish to amphibian, from amphibian to some type of land creature - or more simply, the view that simple organisms evolved into more complex ones). This view does allow for evolution “within a given specie” (i.e. the wide variety of the canine specie, feline, etc.) This group does not believe that the fossil evidence demonstrates macro-evolution, rather only micro-evolution within species.
I think this “old universe” creationist group believes that the universe and the earth could have existed long before man - specifically Adam was specially created by God - that there could have been other living organisms/animals before Adam (not human organisms though).
I’m NOT an expert by any means of either group, although I do hold to the old universe/earth and do not believe in theistic evolution.
As to “naturalistic/Darwinian evolution” - that theory really does not allow for God - in fact, He’s unnecessary. According to the theory, all that is came from nothing, simple evolves into complex, that mutations and successful variations of species account for all living organisms.
If you hold to the Biblical view that God specially created the universe and all living organisms - there really is not much common ground between naturalistic/Darwinian evolution and “theistic evolution” - at least that’s the way it looks to me.
The theory of evolution is not the problem. Its the philosophical illiteracy of our culture. For those whose knowledge of philosophy and theology are that appropriate to a 6 year old, grown up knowledge of science and other subjects give them the impression that there is not much to philosophy or theology. When in fact, they really won’t really understand science nor any other discipline well until they correct this glaring deficiency.
Three geologists stand at the foot of Mt. Rushmore. The first geologist says, "This mountain depicts perfectly the faces of four U.S. Presidents, it must be the work of a master sculptor." The second says, "You are a geologist, you should know that all mountains were created by natural forces, such as volcanoes and plate movements, the details were then sculpted by erosion from water and wind. How could you possibly think this was the work of an intelligent sculptor? Only a person completely ignorant of geophysics could think those faces were designed."
The third geologist says to himself, "I don't want to be seen as ignorant, but the faces in this mountain sure do look like they were designed." So he thinks a moment and says to the second geologist, "Of course you are right, these faces were sculpted by natural forces such as erosion. Only an ignorant person would think they were designed." Then he turns to the first and says, "But what a magnificent result, there obviously must have been a master sculptor standing by and watching."
I think it is wiser to reason in terms of a third, common cause. People did not suddenly begin reasoning out everything they did in their lives according to glorified Darwinism. That can’t even start to account for all that is human. The coldness of heart brought by the devil is this third, common cause. Seems quite possible to me that a more advanced stage of evil wouldn’t even know anything like genuine sex passion at all, but would be frigid like the modern Japanese, who are besotted with porn. They have few abortions because they have few occasions to even want them.
Our current theories have some very curious forced blind spots.
More than just watching.
We are at a dangerous point in our knowledge today. We don’t have the ability to actually trace a hypothesized tree of life yet, but remain subject to educated guesses. The new science of DNA has already forced reorganization of many of our posited evolutionary trees and the corresponding biological classifications. We could conceivably get into a position that says entire branches of our “evolutionary tree” look like a graft from heaven knows where.
To clarify here. Under this theory God is not necessary to explain how given life you got more diverse life. How we went from the first cell to all the different organisms we have.
The theory of Evolution says nothing about how that first cell came to be. The science on that is highly speculative, and essentially nobody has any real idea. It does not really seem very feasible given what science has discovered, and mostly those that have pet theories on the issue tend to justify them in terms of it being the least crazy ideas of crazy alternatives.
Naturalism implies more than the scientific theory of Evolution, it is a philosophical view that holds that there is nothing super natural in existence, that only the "natural" exists. Materialism...the concept that there is only matter and energy and such is a form of naturalism. If naturalism is true, then not only must the scientific theory of evolution be true (in an unguided sense)--which I personally find plausible, but also abiogenesis must be true somehow (the start of life, how we got to the first cell or other thing that could replicate itself and start mutating in an unguided process), even though this notion is not plausible under current science on my view.
But the least plausible thing Naturalism needs to be true is an explanation of nature itself. The actual stuff and material in the universe. For centuries the idea was that it simply always existed. However science seems to have blown all that up in a big bang. And even before it did, the notion suffered from logical problems that make it infeasible since it implies an actual infinite chain of events in nature, which is not feasible. The alternate explanations are that nature had a beginning yet no cause, that is that something came from nothing. This I find not feasible. There is some confusion about a counter example where you can get energy from empty space in quatumn fluctiations, and thus people say "hey look, something can come form nothing". But this is just a confusion of terms. Empty space is not nothing. It is something that can produce quantumn fluctuations.
Really Naturalism is a failed philosophy decimated by both reason and science. Evolution by contrast s a plausible scientific theory.
I could never understand the WHY if the creationists were on the 'right' side of God, how come the Spokes Monkey Trial turned out like it did... There is not one single incident in the whole of the WORD when flesh was following the WORD the anti-God gained standing. I began a search to find out the answer to that question. Hence, the age of flesh was by design after the casting out of the devil who decided he would be god. God put HIS plan in motion already knowing the 'souls' mind set prior to this flesh age. The reason why God said in two places Jacob he loved and Esau God hated is that each and every soul has a history before they choose to take this flesh journey. How much of the 'brain' intellect of the soul is any one person allow to have remembrance?
In the meantime, have you stopped beating your spouse/kids/significant other?
>>Something or some model has to show or give reasons for dinosaurs.<<
“Reasons?”
>> Yes, humans and apes are genetically similar...but to date, archeologists have dug up ape remains and they’ve dug up human remains...but never the remains of a being that was ‘in between’.. (sic)<<
If you understood TTOE you would know there is no such thing. Your statement is scientifically wrong and your conclusion is accordingly wrong.
I suggest you study a subject before opining.
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