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To: betty boop; spirited irish
I make it a rule not to engage with attacks on evolution that are based solely on someone's interpretation of the Bible or personal understanding of God. If people get the science wrong or make false claims about the evidence, I'll try and correct them. I'll even engage with philosophical ojections, when I think I see holes in them. But if it comes down to an evidence-free "evolution can't be true because God told me it isn't" statement, there's not a lot to say.

For that reason, I didn't comment on spirited Irish's post. But in light of your challenge, there are two points I would make:

First, no one claims that Jesus was who He was because of some evolutionary process. "If evolution is not now able to produce a greater than Jesus, then it seems the system has ceased to be evolution"--that's just dumb. Nothing evolved to be the Son of God, and Jesus' divine nature owes nothing to evolution. On the other hand, there's no reason to think that in His human nature He was any different from any other man of his time--certainly nothing is recorded of His having other than a normal human body. It's the union of the two natures that makes Him unique, not the workings of some physical process.

Second, "Jesus Himself stated in Matthew 19:4 (cf. Mark 10:6): 'Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.' But if Evolution Theory is true then Jesus Christ is a liar." I've certainly seen this claim before, and my answer would be twofold:

1. If I put flour, water, yeast, sugar, and salt in my bread machine, set the timer, and go to bed, am I a liar if I later say "I made bread last night"? (Especially if I'm the person who build the bread machine?) So if God in the Beginning created a universe that, according to His will and in accordance with His laws, eventually produced male and female humans, why is Jesus a liar to say God made them male and female at the beginning?

2. His point wasn't the timeline of creation, anyway--His point was the basis for the sanctity of marriage. It's only natural that He would teach in the language of a shared story. To borrow someone else's analogy, am I a liar if I give my kids the "when two people love each other very much..." answer to where babies come from? The point of the story isn't the mechanics of sex, and the point of Jesus' story wasn't the mechanics of creation.

Like I said, I don't want to argue Bible interpretation. But I didn't want you to go away thinking your "friends of Darwinist persuasion" were left dumbstruck by SI's points.

118 posted on 04/22/2012 6:03:00 PM PDT by Ha Ha Thats Very Logical
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To: Ha Ha Thats Very Logical; spirited irish; Alamo-Girl
... if God in the Beginning created a universe that, according to His will and in accordance with His laws, eventually produced male and female humans, why is Jesus a liar to say God made them male and female at the beginning?

I never said that Jesus is a liar to say God made them male and female at the beginning; neither did spirited irish.

The biblical point (I believe) is that God did create man "male and female" in the Beginning; i.e., in the spiritual creation of Genesis 1. Male and female were not physically "enfleshed" until Genesis 2, and not at the same time.

The point is, God's creation of man was already complete in Genesis 1, regardless of physical considerations that ensued later. That means that man did not gradually "evolve" into his present state, and certainly not from any lower order in nature.

Did you actually read spirited's essay/post? Did you understand it?

120 posted on 04/23/2012 9:02:11 AM PDT by betty boop (We are led to believe a lie when we see with, and not through the eye. — William Blake)
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