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To: Heartlander
Evolutionists believe in a creator - the creator being nature.

True, but not a particularly useful statement. Evolutionists believe in the process of variation and selection. First causes are not addressed.

There are science buildings at famous universities with inscriptions going back to the 1890's saying "The laws of nature are the thoughts of God".

I guess the majority of scientists believe in a single act of creation rather than a continual tweaking of natural law.

1,441 posted on 03/22/2002 1:40:38 PM PST by js1138
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To: js1138
There are science buildings at famous universities with inscriptions going back to the 1890's saying "The laws of nature are the thoughts of God". I guess the majority of scientists believe in a single act of creation rather than a continual tweaking of natural law.

Well said. I, as a believing Jew, accept evolution as supported by the preponderance of the scientific evidence, and I do not find this inconsistent with my faith. The laws of nature are God's laws; God made them. If something happens in a natural way, it doesn't mean that it isn't also a miracle: God created the laws of nature, and those laws are thus fully capable of carrying out God's purposes.

One example: There is an ancient Jewish prayer, dating back to at least the first century BCE, and still included in Jewish prayer books (Orthodox, Conservative and Reform), which praises God for creating the sun and moon. That prayer says that, with each morning's sunrise, God "in His goodness, constantly renews each day the work of Creation." When Copernicus found that the sun rises because of the earth's rotation, and not because an angel is pushing it, Jews neither attacked Copernican theory nor abandoned this prayer.

Similarly, Darwinian theory is, to me, in no way inconsistent with the Bible's teaching that God created man. One Orthodox rabbi, writing in the 1930s, reconciled Darwin and Judaism by pointing out that, according to the Torah, God formed man from "the dust of the earth"; this rabbi wrote, "it is utterly insignificant to my faith where that dust came from. If God chose to use apes, so what?"

1,445 posted on 03/22/2002 2:03:48 PM PST by Lurking Libertarian
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