>> The point of those scriptures [about the geocentric universe] is that God did those things, not how he did them. Reading into those scriptures "how" is error.
Patrick - The quote above is not from me! And I can't find it in this thread. Who said this?
> Yes. You've got it! Now if you could just apply that notion to the passages that prevent you from even considering evolution ...
I was brought up to believe evolution. And I will say I knew and understood more science at age 12 than the 99th percentile of adults do right now (though that's not saying much!) I have already been taught evolution, and have rejected it. A lot of hardened evolutionists have been taught Christianity (or a perversion thereof) and rejected it.
"Yes. You've got it! Now if you could just apply that notion to the passages that prevent you from even considering evolution ..."Well, I certainly agree that Genesis doesn't tell us how God create man and there are some possible gaps. Could he have used an evolutionary process. It's possible. But I doubt it.
There are several issues with this.
- We are given a time frame that is reiterated as 7 days morning and night.
- This does "appear" to put creation into earth's timeframe.
- Even if the 7 days are literal 24 hour periods, it may still be possible that God used evolutionary processes in part of his creation. But I wouldn't bet on it. I don't see much evidence, that He did.
- God, I suspect, is a master of time. And while there are those people who say that if God created Earth in 7x24 hours but made it look like 5 billion years, then God must be deceptive. I think that's a very foolish attitudeto import motive on God, when for all we know He may have been nothing more than process considerations that we haven't considered.
- Is chance evolution, really creation? I suppose there is a loose interpretation, just like throwing paint on a wall is considered art. Setting up an evolutionary process to see what develops could I suppose be considered creation, even though He relies more on chance than true creative process. I really really doubt this though.
- It still seems logical that random mutations are much more likely to lose information in the genetic code, drop information or replace it with meaningless random code, thereby reducing functionality than it is to improve it.
- God tells us we are made in his image. It is really hard to construct a scenario where this doesn't refute evolution. Because if we are made by chance. what are the odds that we are turned out to be in God's image?
It is possible that in the creative process, God made some lifeforms that He subsequently decided to improve. Thus, what may look like evolution or random mutation to us, may be a continuation of God's direct design and intervention and not chance at all.
- The Milano mutation that fights heart disease, may not be a random mutation, but may be a special blessing.
- I've read that AB- blood type can be traced to Jewish heritage. I don't know if that's true or not. It is widely distributed in the world today. Of course the Jews scattered throughout the world. There are some Jewish groups with high counts of AB-. If it is true, it's interesting because AB- is thought to have "evolved" to have extra immunity from diseases and less susceptible to allergies. If true, I think it would be funny if God's chosen people have been blessed with the most advanced blood type.
- We have a record that God reduced man's lifespan down to 120 years. That's bound to be a genetic change. But did God use random mutation or how did God acccomplish this. The Bible does not say God never made any further changes to the Genetic code of His creation.
Most importantly though, I still don't believe the evolutionist's have not made their case. They say things are impossible based on their own current limited understanding. They make wild speculations about what happened in the past and present them as fact, even though it's been less than 200 years that man has even known dinosaur's existed. They are clearly biased in many of their writings. They have perpetrated frauds in support of evolution, which certainly did not get the kind of scrutiny from peer review that creationist writings get. They have and continue to ignore major pitfalls in assumptions about dating methods.
It's only been 200 years since man even knew Dinosaur's existed. On the other hand I've got a record that is at least 3000 years old that purports to be from our Creator, holds up the highest standard known of right and wrong, and that has other evidence such as fulfilled prophesy to back it up. I've watched through the years as scientists said the dates and people and places in the Bible couldn't possibly be correct, only to learn later that yes, those dates do match, those people did exist and those places were real places.
And while the record has been misinterpreted by some such as assuming "cannot me moved" means "not in motion or not in orbit". I expect that in the final analysis the Bible will be proved correct.