Posted on 09/09/2006 8:39:07 PM PDT by curiosity
Well, if you believe in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary that the Earth is 4,000 years old and that the Bible must be interpreted as absolutely factual rather than as a framework of God's teachings, you can think any dumb thing that you want to.
But that is all noise. I don't think intellectual Catholics, take the Biblical genesis words literally. I think they think more in terms of metaphor, and elaborate based on later insights. But I could be wrong. I am a near Atheist Wasp, unschooled in any of this. In any event, leaps of faith need not be leashed to one paticular tract in one text. It may be more a many layers of the onion thingy.
Funny, that's a perfect description of ID. And its dishonest as well. The ID we are now seeing was designed by the Discovery Institute to sneak creation "science" into the schools, following the Supreme Court decision banning it. Its all spelled out in the Discovery Institute's Wedge Strategy.
(When the Discovery Institute actually discovers something other than David Hannum's momentous insight, ping me.)
I won't try to dissuade you from your closely held beliefs. However, I reiterate that evolution, as one of God's chosen method for creation, is entirely compatible with Christianity.
God never changes, He IS.
Intellectual Catholics are called heretics.
Sorry, that happens not to be the case.
As a quick example, the five mtDNA haplogroups making up the New World populations seem to have split from the old world some 30-50,000 years ago.
They have evolved into multiple haplotypes since then.
And that's just in the New World. The Old World has a lot more variation.
I firmly believe in God and that God created the methods for science to explain the way things happen so our puny little minds could comprehend some of it. If He hadn't done that, He wouldn't have been a very smart God.
My beliefs also.
I believe that God established the rules and regulations for evolution by His creation of DNA. He knew that this would eventually lead to the development of a being that would achieve a high enough level of consciousness to appreciate that "somebody" had set all of this up. It was at this time that He blessed Man with a soul and gave us Free Will to accept or reject Him.
I do not believe that God directs all things that happen. He establishes the conditions and then allows most things to progress according to His natural laws. The study of His natural laws is called Science and one of these laws is called evolution.
Darwin did not invent evolution; he recognized it as one of God's laws. He knew nothing of DNA. We do. Study DNA and you will find that it is so beautiful that only God could have created it.
"unguided process"
You guys are getting hung up on words. What's a guided process?
Every time I throw a ball in the air, it comes back down to Earth. Is that a guided process? God at work?
The universe operates by certain physical rules - that covers everything from the way planets move to the way crystals grow. Why can't you also accept that rules could guide the way life develops from simple single-celled organsisms to more complex? A LOT can happen over billions of years.
All I am asking you to do, is explain to Dave Lone Ranger as you explained to me, about how the races of men were created on the 6th day, and Adam on the 8th day...you explained this once to me, and I brought it up to DaveLoneRanger...I could not argue the point that Murray makes, as well as you did...so that is why I pinged you...
Just because I may not accept Murrays interpretation, does not mean anything negative about him or you...I am simply asking you to explain to Dave, as you explained to me, what Genesis, chapters 1 and 2 are saying...
I have no idea why you are so upset about this...
I have read, that Apes have far more DNA diffenetiation than humans do with one another. There is this chat, that that happened because when the planet got hostile, humans got down to a few thousand in population, at the neck of the bottle. That may or may not be true. The older I get, the more I think I perceive that humans are remarkably similar, in what causes them to tick.
I loathe that word heretic. It gives me the chills. It brings back so many memories of the ugly in history, and in the present, in some benighted and ignorant quarters.
What do you mean by that?
A good interactive website showing one view of the populating of the earth can be found here.
The bottleneck affected a small group which followed the coast from Africa to India and beyond. They were cut off from the main body of modern humans by a pretty serious volcano.
I appreciate that you are not attempting to dissuade me. However, Christ will not fit in the evolutionary process, there was nothing random about His appointed time and the exact birth in that appointed time of His mother Mary from that traced linage all the way back to Adam.
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