Welcome to Gaia! :: god and evolution both exist?

I found something here that i have believed in for a long time (can you believe in god and evolution )


"I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God and what science tells me about nature. Like St. Augustine in A.D. 400, I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to suggest a scientific textbook but a powerful and poetic description of God's intentions in creating the universe. The mechanism of creation is left unspecified. If God, who is all powerful and who is not limited by space and time, chose to use the mechanism of evolution to create you and me, who are we to say that wasn't an absolutely elegant plan? And if God has now given us the intelligence and the opportunity to discover his methods, that is something to celebrate."



Its an amazing theory isn't it?

An interesting and yet, very unoriginal theory. If you want to go the bible route, then earth was created (including humanity) in 6 days, so there is no luck, at all for initial life, but this inequality doesn't hold back the possibility of the Christian God to use evolution/natural selection to discreetly make intended changes throughout the world.

Taking into account that the things written in the Bible were probably exagerated a lot, God could have created us similar to monkeys long time before what is told in the bible, Adan and Eve could have been cavemen. Humanity almost got extinct 70000 years ago because of climatic changes and maybe that's what inspired the Noah's Ark story and such things. The stories told in the bible may be told that way just to make them a bit more interesting and divine looking.

Also, we're all supposed to be descendants of that skeleton called Lucy found a long time ago wich could have been Eve.

btw, english is not my main language so i hope i didn't mess up anything while writing.

Actually, the bible also says that one day to god is supposed to be 1,000 years our time. So that bit could easily also mean that the earth was created in 6,000 years.

Lucy is an australopithecine skeleton, the oldest human evolutionary skeleton found. It's not "Eve." Mitochondrial Eve is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for all currently living humans.



Which is still far too short a timeline, as the age of the earth is estimated at 4.3*10^9 years via geological dating. Even if it took 6000 years to create the earth, with how the Bible works that's only 12,000 years when we obviously have the dinosaurs existing 6.5*10^6 years ago, and rocks dated to billions of years older than that.

Wow, thats kind of funnny.... The bible says that one of gods days is 1000 of ours? heh heh lol i think its funny no one else caught on to that. you must have misread the text, because it doesn't actually say anythign even remotely close to that.... lol nice try tho. XD

"VeolinPosted: Sun May 11, 2008 8:21 pm

"Actually, the bible also says that one day to god is supposed to be 1,000 years our time. So that bit could easily also mean that the earth was created in 6,000 years."

heh heh, check your sources people...

First of all, why would anyone want to collaborate evolution and God in the same picture? just because they're both convincing in their own way doesn't mean that they're compatible... First of all, assuming that God exists, by definition, he would have to be [assumed to be for the sake of this debate] omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. why? because if one is going to use the bible's creation story, it would be prudent for one to also go by the bibles definition [seeing as agreeing with one unspecified portion and completely disregarding another would be paramount to mental suicide...] of God. Therefore if God possesses the attributes that one must assume the he possesses, why couldn't he create the world the way the bible said he did? [6 days[the intelligent thing to assume is that "day" means "day" since one should not assume that everytime the bible says "day" it is referring to millions of years.[you must be consistent if you are going to read into the text]]] If you can believe in a supernatural God that is all the bible says he is, than is it such an additional leap of faith to believe he created the earth and everything in it in 6 days? If it is just as amazing for him to create the world through evolution as it is for him to do it in 6 days, then why whould you go out of your way to assume the text is wrong [replace a supernatural argument with another supernatural argument?]?

Furthermore assuming there was a God, and keepign in mind his omnipotence, could he not [for whatever reason] create the world to look older than it is? i.e. carbon dating?

I am laying down an ultimatum: Either side with Evolution, or side with intelligent design; but to stand in the middle is to leave oneself open to the most obvious logical flaws and attacks.

Stand up World! Down with Apathy! lol

Same for me.
I believe that God is behind the origin of life, but also I find it logical that the forming of the world was a process. Evolution tries to explain how the process was occuring.
Also I don't see a problem with the time periods; for God time is irrelevant, unlike for us humans; time periods that are unimaginable for us don't mean anything to him.
It's not that unusual for Christians to accept evolution, specially here in Europe.