Most of us here are in full agreement with you, but as you can see, you've woken up the Troglodites, and caused them to declare their own ignorance.
buffyt wrote: “Well, it is either Creation OR Evolution. Can’t be BOTH.” I gather from your following remarks that your own thinking runs along similar lines.
While I respect this view, I must confess I do not share it. I see no reason whatsoever that evolution might not be a tool that God uses to express His Will WRT His creation.
After all, it seems clear that the creation -- the universe, or cosmos in all its spiritual and physical dimensions -- is involved in a temporal process. If it is, then it can express in one of two ways: either as an instantly “done” and already perfect creation from the very beginning (i.e., there is no distinction to be made between time and eternity on this model), or a creation that is free (under divine law) to develop and change, ultimately to express God’s purpose in creating it. What can change and develop requires time (and space) in which to do so. In a universe capable of change, the “time stretch” between Alpha and Omega can be seen as involving an evolutionary process.
Actually, it seems God gave a dress rehearsal of a perfect creation in the Garden of Eden. But then Adam fell, and took the entire creation down with him into his fallen state. This to me signifies the beginning of the temporal process -- when Adam fell into mortality as the consequence of his rebellion against God, his Father. With this act, which justly earned him banishment from the timeless Eden, he and all his descendents fell under the rule of time. This is God’s Will in action.
Anyhoot, that is my conjecture. Ultimately it is based on the recognition that God gave us four revelations: (1) the Holy Scriptures themselves; (2) the incarnation of the Logos, the Word of the Beginning, the Son of God manifest in the man Jesus the Christ, the revelation of the full presence of Emmanuel, of “God with us,” at once fully and truly God, and fully and truly man; (3) the revelation of resurrected Jesus Christ’s Holy Spirit in our own souls; and (4) the Creation itself, the “book of Nature.”
The glorious thing about these four revelations is that they do not and cannot ever contradict one another. That is because each is a creation of God; and God is Truth.
Not only do they not contradict one another, but each sheds light on each of the others.
Obviously, the only revelation accessible by the methods and tools of science is the “book of Nature.” And I have to say that the big bang/inflationary universe model posited (and increasingly well-documented) by modern-day physics seems perfectly consistent with Genesis 1….
Also I see nothing in Holy Scripture that says evolution is not “true.” But in saying that, I am not speaking of the Darwinian theory, which posits that biology must begin in biology, not in an act of God. I’m using the word “evolution” in its most generic sense: as referring to a process that unfolds in time.
If God chose to work this way, then who among you, Christian brethren, would object?!
“you’ve woken up the Troglodites, and caused them to declare their own ignorance.”
ROTFLMBO!
Thanks for the ping, “interesting” discussion as usual!