Posted on 01/15/2005 3:57:44 PM PST by Catholic54321
Was the world created exactly as it says in the book of Genesis, or is the theory of evolution a more accurate account? Not every faith that includes Genesis among its Scriptures feels compelled to debate the matter. For the vast majority of Jews, any discrepancy between science and faith was pretty much settled 1,100 years ago, said Rabbi Steve Vale of Congregation Ha-Makom (The Jewish Community of Solano County).
Saadia Gaon, a Babylonian rabbi who helped codify Rabbinic Judaism, resolved the conflict, Vale said.
"Saaida Gaon said that if there is scientific evidence of something and it contradicts what Torah (Scripture) says, the Torah can't be wrong and science can't be wrong. I'm wrong. I'm interpreting it wrong," the rabbi explained.
Genesis, for instance, says the world was created in seven days. "There's no compelling reason for us to say a day is 24 hours," Vale said. "There's no reason to say God could not create the world through evolution."
Nor do Jews necessarily hold that Genesis is the start of the story. "'In the beginning' really means, 'when God was beginning the world,' " Vale said. "The Bible starts the story with the beginning of life and human beings, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it was the beginning of God or his creation."
It is impossible to know whether the world evolved or was created as Genesis describes it, Vale said, but that's not the point of Scripture.
"For Jews, the Bible is a book about why we are here and how we're supposed to act, not how we're created. People are welcome to read that into it, but it's not for us," Vale said. "I'm more interested in how I'm supposed to act, how I'm supposed to treat people on the streeet, how am I supposed to connect to God through the acts in my life."
A similar philosophy guides Roman Catholic teaching.
"We say that the lessons of the Bible are lessons about God's relationship with the human race and our relationship with God - that all the stories are calculated, if you will, to elucidate something of the relationship between God and the universe and his people," said the Rev. Vincent O'Reilly of St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Vacaville. "So the Bible tells us who made the world and what the responsibility of creation is to the one who created it, but we rely on science to teach us how the world developed."
In the Catholic church, science and faith collided in the 17th century, when astronomers Johannes Kepler and Galileo upended the church's teaching that the Earth was the center of the universe. In the intervening 400 years, Catholic theologians and scientists have come to a truce.
"All truth has to come from God," O'Reilly explained. "If science is telling us some truth about the development or evolution of the universe, then that's the truth as we know it today. Five hundred years from now, some scientist may come up with a slightly different version. But that won't change our position that a creator designed the universe and we're striving to understand how."
Besides, he added, how God created the world isn't the point of the creation story. "The story is ultimately that human beings are the highpoint of God's creation. And God has charged humans with responsibility for the rest of creation."
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints also doesn't spend a lot of time debating the fine points of evolution or creationism. Its official teaching lies between the two points.
"We believe that God created the world, but not necessarily in seven days," said Dayton Call, a spokeman for the church in Solano County. "When it comes to evolution, we don't believe human beings evolved. We believe we were descended from Adam and Eve. But that's as far as the church's position goes on the subject. If there's evolution involved as far as the creative process, we would not argue that there's not."
Orthodox Christians also steer clear of the creation vs. evolution debate, said the Rev. Silas Ruark of St. Timothy Orthodox Church (Antiochan) in Cordelia.
"Orthodoxy basically accepts the fact that there is very much we don't know about the beginning and the end," Ruark said. "We know that in the beginning God created. And we know that in the end he will bring it to a close. But to venture into a great deal of speculation about the how or even the when is for us to assume that we can understand the mind of God."
Most Orthodox Christians accept the Genesis account as being a "true revelation of God's creation and God's interaction with humankind," Ruark said. Orthodox Christianity also teaches that the world has "gone haywire" through the disobedience of humankind.
"But the exact hows of the creation, the hows of his incarnation and the hows of his second coming are known only to God," Ruark said.
I agree with everything you said.
These systems have self-replicating mechanisms, self-healing mechanisms, reproductive mechanisms, fuel refining digestive mechanisms, self-cleaning mechanisms, highly refined oxygen filtering mechanisms, waste disposal mechanisms, cooling mechanisms, heating mechanisms, nervous systems, highly sophisticated coverings over structures that attach the energy transfer systems together.
Consider a CPU that can drive a car 60 mph on a winding cliff faced road, while singing a melody, while discerning the wind blowing over every exposed hair, while regulating the motion of a 2000 pound moving object using precise predictive visual stimuli, while cooperatively leaning every muscle of the body into a turn, while recognizing the pitch of the road to calculate the minute steering and braking adjustments, while responding to memories of how the suspension will react at precise angles of momentum, while enjoying the millions of hues the sunlight reflecting produces on a multifaceted ocean.
The production of one of these systems has not been shown to be true. In fact it goes against every common sensical concept of chemistry, biology, physics and mathematical information theory.
"The evidence for Darwinism is not only grossly inadequate, it's systematically distorted. I'm convinced that sometime in the not-to-distant future, people will look back in amazement and say, 'How could anyone have believed this?' Darwinism is merely materialistic philosophy masquerading as science." Jonathan Well, Ph.D. in molecular and cell biology, specializing in vertebrate embryology, 1994, from UC Berkeley.
I like this one too.
"The salient fact is this: if by evolution we mean macroevolution (as we henceforth shall), then it can be said with the utmost rigor that the doctrine is totally bereft of scientific sanction. Now, to be sure, given
the multitude of extravagant claims about evolution promulgated by evolutionists with an air of scientific infallibility, this may indeed sound strange.
And yet the fact remains that there exists to this day not a shred of bona fide scientific evidence in support of the thesis that macroevolutionary transformations have ever occurred."
Wolfgang Smith, Ph.D Mathematics , MS Physics
Teilardism and the New Religion
Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1988, p. 5
You say evolution doesn't pass the common sense meter. But you don't follow with showing contradiction, just an illustration of how amazing evolution is.
Yes, it is amazing. And probably far more amazing than we can ever understand. But the fact it is amazing doesn't refute it. The handiwork of God is meant to be amazing.
I'm not arguing for you to believe in nihilist. The horde of nihilist who have seized control of the media, and who threaten to sieze control of science are perverters of the truth, and we must not abandon the power of science to them.
I'm arguing that the exploration of the wonders of God's creation is a pious and just cause, but tha your well-intentionned, hyperliteral misreading of the scripures is a threat to that cause. Believe me, the ones who are most in awe of the universe are the ones who have studied it the closest.
Centuries ago, Galileo abused the work of Copernicus to blaspheme against God. Ever since then, heretics and apostates have been trying misconstrue science into evidence God doesn't exist. The thesists, Christian and Jew, have been racing against them to uncover the truth. But wit the advent of mass media, science was brought to the masses, and it has been the nihilists presenting it.
Their victory was two-fold. First, they succeeded in misrepresenting the truth. So many popular notions of science would never find their way into a legitimate science textbok: that scientists have created life in a jar; that life has been found on Mars, that amino acids can aseemble themselves into DNA, etc., etc.
But they have also succeeded in causing Christians to become defensive against science and abandon the contest to the nihilists.
Dont ever EVER confuse what is amazing with what is implausible.
Would it surprise you to know I agree with Jonathan Well? "Darwinism" is a materialist philosophy which is guilty of reduction to absurdity. While Darwin's work was important to the development of the modern theories of sexual selection and evolution, his paper created a philosophical movement among the intelligentsia which had very little to do with science. Most reputable biologists reacted so strongly against this "Darwinism" that, if anything, the reaction precluded scientific study! (case in point: the reaction against "The Bell Curve.") You've discovered the one irrational point of biology: Science, to remain pure, must refrain from making value statements. And Darwinism is about making value statements, so biologists won't even consider it, even if it makes sense.
But we're not arguing "Darwinism." We're arguing "evolutionary biology." You'll notice I haven't once used the word "Darwinism," and neither do any principle sources.
Now, there is a point to made: Evolutionary biology is a model, not a scientific law. It is drastically imperfect, and there are loads of discoveries yet to be made which will refine our understanding.
But to state that our such incomplete knowledge means that the truth might lie closer to creationism is akin to stating that because we have so much to learn still about meteorology, that there may really be a great dome in the sky which seperates the rain from the Earth, and that this dome occasionally loosens, allowing rain to fall.
If you have some time I suggest you take counsel from an expert on this subject. He has numerous doctorates in the fields relating to evolution, and he is a follower of Jesus Christ.
Click here -->>His name is Dr. Arthur Ernest Wilder-Smith
Curriculum Vitae
No, you are wrong.
Gen 2:4 demands that "yom" in the 6/7 days of Creation the Hebrew word for "day" be translated as an indefinite period of time.
Since the first three days happened before the Sun was created, this reinforces that yom cannot be 24 hrs in this case.
"If the days were not LITERAL DAYS, then there was no reason for GOD HIMSELF to use the word DAY here, was there? You are calling God a liar when you do that..."
No, we are saying the fundamentalist take on Scripture is incorrect. Now, you may say that fundamentalists ARE God, but I don't think so. ;-)
I have a Dr. and am a Christian and am telling you it is not absurd to think that God created evolution. Since evolution is a fact, if you deny He created it, you are denying God!
"The sun wasn't around till the fourth day"
So what makes you think you know how long the first three days were?
Then by your definition, Evening and Morning are indefinite time periods, also.
You cannot have it both ways.
Exactly what does flying have to do with whether something is a bird or not?
DUH! Fowl of the air. :-)
So if it can't fly it isn't a bird?
The bird does not have to fly. I put my hands in my pockets when the urge comes over me.
The better question is, are flightless birds devolved?
I don't forsee any evolutionists taking up that torch. But considering their tendency toward error their interpretations aren't something I give much weight to.
What exactly do you mean by "devolved"? Are you implying that flightless birds are less fit for their environment? Do they fail to reproduce? Do they live shorter lives than birds that can fly?
Of course evening and morning are indefinite. Even now, the time of darkness and light changes with the seasons.
Genesis is a conception of inspired but unscientific writer/s who did not understand any science. They did not know about tilt of the earth, that the stars were actually other suns far away or that the earth was round.
Genesis 1 is Hebrew poetry. Poetry has a lot of symbolism, analogy and other structures like Hebrew thought poetry that make it unlikely to be literal.
But when taken in a more reasonable manner Genesis comes fairly close to science considering when it was written.
When God said "let there be light" all things could have been created through Einsteins conversion of matter and energy.
The sequence of life appearance, while not precise, does give an indication of the evolution process we observe.
I see no value in holding religious beliefs that are contrary to fact. Apparently, the creationists are convinced that believing nonsense brings them closer to God.
I think they just give God a good laugh.
If you cant even see that when someone says Morning, Evening, a full day
means a 24 hour day, then I am wasting my time.
You need to ractice reading comprehension.
"But considering their [scientists] tendency toward error their interpretations aren't something I give much weight to."
Ever notice how liberals accuse people of doing what they actually do or thinking what they actually think? Creationists do the same thing, both blinded by ideology.
Yet they accuse objective analysis of data by scientist to be "interpretation".
Yet, when you get down to specifics of interpretation of the Bible, the creationists ideas are empty. The 24 hr day is refuted by Gen 2:4. The Bible itself refutes the creationist position.
The fact that no human skeletons have ever been found with
dinosaurs refutes a young earth. The fact that no evidence of a global flood exists, refutes their interpretation of Noah. But they blithely go on babbling about how their ideas are the only ones that make one a Christian and get nastier and nastier during the debate.
I have to admit their repetitiveness and resistance to accepting fact have advanced their cause, but I fail to see what positive end comes from it.
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