Posted on 04/01/2009 6:24:14 AM PDT by seanindenver
Some time ago, a highly charged argument was set in motion. It pitted evolution against creationism. One side of this debate relies on scientific inquiry and the other relies on ancient mythological texts.
That's my view. That's what I intend to teach my children.
Yet, I have no interest in foisting this curriculum on your kids. Nor am I particularly distressed that a creationist theory may one day collide with the tiny eardrums of my precocious offspring.
Which brings me to the Texas Board of Education's recent landmark compromise between evolutionary science and related religious concerns in public school textbooks.
The board cautiously crafted an arrangement that requires teachers to allow students to scrutinize "all sides" of the issue. This decision is widely seen as a win for pro-creationists — or are they called "anti-evolutionists"?
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
Thank you so much, dearest sister in Christ, for the excellent excerpt from Gerald Schroeder!
What if God is a scientist?
This is how we did it 25 years ago when I was in school. We had classroom discussion much like the discussion here. All of you enjoy discussing these things and find it a good use of time and energy, why wouldn't kids?
Nope. It says 6 days but nothing about how or sequence.
All I said in that post was the God wrote with his own hand that he made the heavens and the earth and all that is within them in SIX DAYS.
Do you believe THAT?
bump
BTW, if you claim to be a Christian, do you disagree with God's own written pronouncement (written by his own hand on tablets of stone) that he created the heavens and the earth and all that is within them in 6 days?
I don't believe in the Bishop Usher, six 24 hour days to creation. According to Genesis, God didn't create the sun and the moon to rule over the day and the night until the fourth day. So how long was a day ?
I do NOT support those who would tell children "they are not the creation of God". By that, you must mean atheists, which I am not and never could be.
But let's discard "random" and "meaningless" and go on to "natural selection". Why couldn't that be part of God's plan ? Genesis also states God first made plants, then fishes, then animals, then man. So does evolution.
And men weren't really "men" until they became aware of good and evil. Prior to succumbing to temptation, they lived more like animals - not being ashamed of being naked, etc. Couldn't that describe the evolution of man from hominids to homo sapiens ?
I do not claim to be a Christian. But as I recall, Moses claimed God wrote the Ten Commandments himself on tablets of stone - NOT the whole Bible. Where is that ?
Read Exodus chapter 20. God himself stated that he created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them in SIX DAYS.
That is what God wrote on the Tablets.
God's words.
Not mine.
Men were men from the day that God created man.
Prior to succumbing to temptation, they lived more like animals - not being ashamed of being naked, etc.
Men were men from the day that God created man.
Couldn't that describe the evolution of man from hominids to homo sapiens ?
Men were men from the day that God created man.
And were animals animals from the day that God created them? In other words does a horse today look like a horse in the Garden of Eden, a bear look the same, a finch, a moth, etc., etc. No evolution at all of any kind?
What else would they be? Rocks?
In other words does a horse today look like a horse in the Garden of Eden, a bear look the same, a finch, a moth, etc., etc.
I have no idea. God created animals after their kind. He didn't create an amoeba and then watch it like an ant farm until it suddenly crawled out of the slime and declared itself MAN!
No evolution at all of any kind?
Define "evolution"? Do you mean adaptation to environment within the kinds God created? Or are you suggesting that God made birds from lizards and watched in awe as they grew feathers and learned to fly by trial and error?
No but science can look at fossil records and trace the evolutionary development of a horse, for example. Or a bear, or finches or moths, etc., etc. Are they all wrong? If they are, then what is it that they're looking at? Or when science identifies homo habilis or homo neaderthalensis or other fossils that they believe traces man's evolution, what are those? Were they created in the Garden of Eden as well? If so, what happened to them?
Define "evolution"? Do you mean adaptation to environment within the kinds God created? Or are you suggesting that God made birds from lizards and watched in awe as they grew feathers and learned to fly by trial and error?
I'm talking about the entire spectrum of the fossil record. What are we looking at there?
It depends on their deductions from the evidence. If they deduce that man is evolved from some lower life form, then they are wrong. Any Christian would have to come to that conclustion. The whole premise of Christianity is based upon the fact that because God created man, that Man has a duty to God. If man is evolved and is not a special creation, then sin is illusory and Christianity is pointless. Why did Christ die? Did Christ die so that rocks can be forgiven for sinning against God?
Or when science identifies homo habilis or homo neaderthalensis or other fossils that they believe traces man's evolution, what are those?
Those are dry bones. IIRC Neandrathal Man was a Man with some vitamin deficiencies. Homo Habilis was not. There is no evidence that man evolved from Homo Habilis. None. It is an extrapolation based on a presumption that man was not created and that the only "natural" explanation for the existence of man is that he must have evolved from an amoeba.
Were they created in the Garden of Eden as well?
Who? Neandrthals? Nobody was in the Garden but Adam and Eve
If so, what happened to them?
They died.
I'm talking about the entire spectrum of the fossil record. What are we looking at there?
Show me where evolution can explain the development of complex organs and eyesight and flight? The only thing the fossil recod contains is basically the development of BONES and SHELLS. Nothing in the fossil record suggests how the stuff inside the shells and outside the bones managed to keep those bones and shells alive and make those bones and shells see and hear and walk and fly and think and build and recreate. Quite frankly the only explanation is supernatural. There is no natural explanation for life or for its utter complexity. But anyone who takes that position is automatically considered a kook.
Well I guess that makes me a kook.
Marlowe is right. If there is no sin in the Garden of Eden, then there is no transmitted sin, and there is no need for a savior to save us from those sins. That makes Jesus Christ unnecessary at best and a madman at worst.
An earlier comment says that there is variation within a kind and not the change of one kind to another. I don’t think this is contradicted in any fossil record that I know of. At what point do the bones of a primate belong to an extinct species and at what point do they belong to one within the ‘human kind?’
Alamo-girl has the neat idea that the Garden of Eden was in both the heavenly and the earthly dimension. This is based on the Tree of Life being in the Garden and also appearing in the heavenly in New Jerusalem at the end of Revelation. Time didn’t really begin for Adam and Eve until their expulsion from the Garden. Some 900+ years later Adam died.
My addition to that, in reference to ‘human kind’, is that humans did not begin until that point. Those without the spirit, even the dead carnal spirit, are not “man.”
>>And do you also expect the expression “40 days and 40 nights” to mean EXACTLY 40 days and nights?
It is a common expression from that area and era meaning “for days and days”.<<
There are at least a couple of things going on
1. The actual people of bible didn’t have the math and science so they could have used more information about the actual great lengths of time involved and the mechanisms used.
2.English as a language was opressed - the early Americans who clung to the English language Bible understandably took pride in it but often didn’t consider that it was in no way the original material.
The best things we (we meaning people who are Christians and who respect science) can do is love the Lord your God with your whole heart, with your whole soul, and with all your mind as we love our n9ighbors as ourselves.
A key part of this is loving with the mind - we can think and learn about world, learn how it works beyond what they knew in biblical days . We often find the principle of stories in the bible to be true when the details do not match the evidence.
Fortunately Jesus distilled what is most important.
“We often find the principle of stories in the bible to be true when the details do not match the evidence.”
Indeed. This is because a parable or allegorical story is a way of conveying an essential truth.
But doesn't the Bible repudiate any possibility of macro-evolution at all? Chapter 2 of Genesis tells us the God brought all animals to Adam to be named. Later Noah loaded them all onto the Ark. That would seem to mean that animals were animals, in the form they are now in. So what's with all the fossils? And what about the clear evolutionary progression that science has mapped for many species? Are they all wrong?
There is no evidence that man evolved from Homo Habilis. None.
But there is evidence that they existed. So if not early forms of man then what were they?
Who? Neandrthals? Nobody was in the Garden but Adam and Eve.
Adam, Eve, and all the animals that God created, including the snake. Why were Neanderthals and Habilis banned from the garden?
Show me where evolution can explain the development of complex organs and eyesight and flight?
You deny macro-evolution period, in all forms, and in all context. Evolution of any kind contradicts the Bible and the whole creationist story. All I'm asking is that if man and animals were created as is, as they are now, then what's with the fossil record for a whole host of creatures? Are the all wrong, every single one of them?
Well I guess that makes me a kook.
Your words, not mine.
You refuse to answer my questions. Why should I continue to answer yours?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.