> He simply "spoke" life into existance.
Hmm. Sure about that?
Gen 1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
Gen 1:20 And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.
Gen 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so.
Seems more like he gave orders, and the *Earth* brought forth the critters. Sounds like evolution, to me.
What about this one?
Gen 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
And this one?
Joh 1:3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
"Seems more like he gave orders, and the *Earth* brought forth the critters. Sounds like evolution, to me." ~ orionblamblam
Theological Problems of Theistic Evolution http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1986/JASA3-86VanDyke.html#Theological%20Problems%20of%20Theistic%20Evolution
"A critical examination of the scientific nature of evolutionary mechanisms, specifically differential mortality and resource scarcity, lead to significant anomalies in current interpretations of theistic evolution.
Theistic evolution necessitates that mortality and resource scarcity are the creative agents of God. The Bible consistently identifies them as being 1) a consequence of human sin, 2) a curse on the human species, 3) a tangible manifestation of sin's operation, 4) opposed and abhorred by Jesus Christ in His earthly ministry, and 5) destined to be abolished in the kingdom of God.
Theological, philosophical, and scientific research on evolutionary mechanisms aggravates rather than ameliorates these anomalies, and generates others.
Theistic evolution fails on a broad spectrum of issues to offer an integrative paradigm of evolution and biblical revelation. Until such anomalies are resolved, theistic evolution cannot be viewed as an adequate response to the question of origins.
The controversies generated by the relationship of evolutionary theory to biblical revelation regarding origins have been with us for some time (Moore 1979) and are likely to continue (Aulie 1975). The debate is many centuries old, but has intensified particularly since 1859 with Darwin's publication of Origin of species.
Evolution, in its most restrictive and technical sense, may be defined as change in average population gene frequencies over time. This has been referred to as the .. "special" theory of evolution (Kerkut 1960, Jones 1978).
In this precise sense, evolution is not a theory, but an empirically demonstrable process. This may be contrasted with a broader definition of evolution, sometimes referred to as the "general" theory of evolution (Kerkut 1960, Jones 1978).
In this sense, evolution refers to the process by which living organisms have descended from ancestors unlike themselves through the gradual acquisition of heritable traits, and that all organisms can be traced to a common ancestry which was itself derived from nonliving material.
Theistic evolution may be broadly defined as the belief that God brought about the present diversity of life through the process of (general) evolution.
Many see this as an intelligent manner of reconciling science and Christian faith on the question of origins.
For example, Aulie (1975) sees evolutionary theory as being derived from a Judeo-Christian world view.
"The idea of progress-necessary for the theory of evolution- was strengthened by the secularization of an attitude toward nature that was drawn initially from the Judeo-Christian tradition" (Wagar 1967, cited in Aulie 1975).
Aulie sees the reconciliation as essentially complete. "Contemporary Protestantism has long since made its peace with Darwin" (Aulie 1975).
Evolution has a long lineage as both theory and philosophy.
Its roots can be traced to Thales and Democritus several centuries before Christ.
Evolution began to take on a more scientific nature, especially in biology, in the seventeenth century.
It gained supremacy in that field through Darwin's theory of natural selection (Moore 1979).
Though changes in evolutionary theory since Darwin have been significant enough to warrant the label "Neo-Darwinism" (e.g., Moorhead and Kaplan 1967), the fundamental theorem of evolution, natural selection, has survived essentially intact.
The theory of natural selection states that the traits of organisms which reproduce more offspring increase in frequency over those which produce less offspring in any given population.
Despite recent criticisms (e.g., Thompson 1981) of the tautology inherent in this logic, natural selection's influence on scientific thinking in biology has not noticeably lessened.
Conditions necessary for natural selection to occur within a population include competition, differential survivorship, and differential reproduction.
Competition may be said to occur when two or more individuals attempt to appropriate a necessary, but limited, resource, with the result that 1) at least one individual is excluded from the use of the resource and 2) such exclusion has a measurable effect on the individual's survivorship and reproduction.
Simple mathematical effects of competition's effects on organisms are familiar to biologists as the Lotka-Voltera equations (Colinvaux 1973:330ff.) and, conceptually, as the Competitive Exclusion Principle (Krebs 1972:231).
Competition demands resource scarcity.
Problems with integrating natural selection through resource competition with a biblical world view begin at this point.
The biblical account of creation provides no principle that scarcity should be a necessary condition of life. Instead, the antithesis of scarcity is described. The newly created world is portrayed as one of abundance. ...." ~ F.Van Dyke
Click above link to read further.