Evolution & Creation (4/6/06)

[Xahmen]

Yeah, that maybe the story of creation in Genesis is just that, a ******** story written as an intro a to a holy book.
It isn't like God or Jesus wrote it.
It was written by man, like ALL of the bible.
Man is not infallible.  

[OneWithDunamis]

Zahwomen

Yeah, that maybe the story of creation in Genesis is just that, a ******** story written as an intro a to a holy book.
It isn't like God or Jesus wrote it.
It was written by man, like ALL of the bible.
Man is not infallible.

But if God is real, He'd make sure His message to the people is flawless, which all Christians believe. But no one can fully understand God because the Bible doesn't provide every answer to every question, only what God chooses to reveal to people.  

[scotch0069]

Actually if seen in context the bible is not far off.
1. Bible is God inspired, meaning God guided the person to write it, but think how a person can describe the big bang theory without understanding even the basics of physics.
2. This argument can and probably will be said that, then you could fit anything into the Bible, its just to vague.
-To which I would have to say that, no its not as vague that you can put 'anything' into its context. If anything that could be assumed it was that God has a really great ability for analogies. The problem is finding how it works fluidly.
- EXAMPLE: The parable of the talents. Where a master has given three servents 'talents' and told them to go forth. (I am paraphrasing if you need exact text, pm me) and the master was pleased when the servents came back with multiple talents, and tossed out the one that brought back the same one. This correlates on multiple levels, how fathers want to see their children be productive and not just give back what the father gave them. Also, it can seen by employers. They don't give you money to work just to give it back.
So the key is really see the context in which God was using the analogy. The difficulty is understanding the master scheme as peons. For instance the big bang theory can be seen as the first line of Gensis, (Again I think) in which it says "In the beginning the world was formless..."
To the unscientific mind this is passed over. But the key word is formless, meaning gas OR liquid. Something that to which has no form and when presented with the current theory of the big bang (And i saw this on the discovery channel) they believe that the four primary forces of physics were some how "one" and "moved" about eachother but had so much energy that it could not be confined. Thus they "exploded".

(another disclaimer, I know im not an expert on such matters, and i wont claim to be, but i would like this avenue to be looked at.)
And most scientists would say that this time in when the explosion occured is when these physic's forces began defining themselves as we understand them.

Now what does this have to do with evolution? The simple answer to this is that just by looking above an entire paragraph (to which millions more could be applied if the full theory could be written) was written as one sentence in the Bible. Is this the basis that the big bang is biblical no, but if you look at this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang_theory a catholic priest was the one that presented the idea.
The idea of evolution is not that far off, infact its really plausable in certain instances, the only argument that I would have for it is that it seems to be seen in DNA today that mutations don't seem to matter or even be harmful to the host. And the traits being passed down are not created but just that passed down. So, by theory shouldn't there be a new "trait" somewhere? Or, do we have to wait another thousand years to see if it will happen. Which is then an open ended argument to which the scientist can say wait a little longer....
Now, it could be assumed that evolution could be seen as a "sin" of sorts... now dont go off the deep end just yet let me explain. God created eden and it was said that all was perfect, and when sin entered by the suggestion of the snake, it was said that toils of the world will greatly increase. (in a sense again paraphrasing). So, couldn't it be assumed that after this instance that then there once was a 'perfect' beginning and as the 'walls' of protection of the garden have been destroyed, the sin of the outside mutated the perfection inside. Thus giving rise to change in a species to adapt to its sourroundings. The idea of evolution.
Evolution is not a sin, and shouldn't be seen as it either, but more of a biproduct of a bad choice. You touch a stove you get burned. You sin in the perfect garden, sin enters the perfect garden and mutates it.  

[lordstar]

Zahwomen

Yeah, that maybe the story of creation in Genesis is just that, a ******** story written as an intro a to a holy book.
It isn't like God or Jesus wrote it.
It was written by man, like ALL of the bible.
Man is not infallible.

bingo

and to add
if the bible was divinly inspired there is nothing stopping anyone from corupting its text

also
stating that the bible is "God inspired" as fact and not as a given in this sort of debate is just too far of a logic jump as I am sure Zahwomen would agree  

[Nebulance]

I'm not going to try to convince everyone of my views here (this is too big a subject), although you can examine ideas of Theistic Evolution at Answers in Creation.

Just for clarification of the debate, I would like to point out that there are at least three separate issues (all of which have scientific and theological aspects) here that are often being treated as one.

1. Origin of the Universe: this has nothing to do with evolution, although it is a relevant origins question.

2. Origin of Life (biological life on Earth): again, a relevant origins questions that has little to do with evolution. Spontaneous Generation (as a manner of course) was disproved by scientists (Louis Pasteur chief among them) many years ago. Many people now hold, however, that this was the one incident of it in all of Earth's history that we know of (hypothesize about, anyway). Many others hold that it never occured at all, that the better explanation is that Life originated as a direct act of God.

Theories on how this occured are much less-developed and far more speculative than the Theory of Evolution. There is no evidence of it, naturally, and there is no hypothesis which can come close to describing how it could have occured. Because athiests feel that it must have occured, however, there are a number of loose speculations as to how it could have happened. It is not that it could not have possibly happened (we simply don't know that), but it does not have enough support to argue for as a matter of science, making it quite separate from evolution (evolution deals with lifeforms composed of already-living cells, although there would be some conceptual parallels with self-replicating molecules, naturally).

3. Development of life (extended creation, evolution, etc): This is the main issue. This discussion has far more to do with science, since we can actually examine evidence concerning it (radiation for the Big Bang theory can't tell us if God started it, but DNA and other records can tell us if animals developed gradually or all at once).


I just wanted to note that views on these issues are quite separate evaluations that must be made carefully. Just because God was involved with one of them does not necessitate His involvement in all of them, and just because He was not involved with one of them does not necessitate that He was not involved with all of them.

For example, you could believe that God created the Universe, but then allowed Life to form and evolve. Or maybe He had to form it originally so it could evolve on its own. Or maybe He had a hand in the evolution process but life originally formed on its own. Here we see complexity of views on matters of origins.

Another point I might add is much more theological-- The Origin of Man: Evolved or not, how did he become more than the other animals? Was it just greater intellect, was his body or his soul created specially by God... and so forth...