Thanks for your comments. Just to clarify, do you think there was a time when humans never experienced death or suffering ? Can you elaborate?
Your question is complex and you are using terminology that I don’t necessarily accept or agree with, so I want to answer carefully.
Humans are special, as you have said. They alone possess the image of God. I perceive the image of God to be the capacity to love and to sin, as well as to possess a soul which continues on after we die physically. God gave us this capacity because he desires a relationship with us. God gave us free will so that we could choose to love or to not. Love means nothing without a choice.
So then, given a choice, we all decide whether or not to be in a relationship with him or not. So yes, God is guilty of creating us, but that’s where His culpability ends. The rest is up to us.
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Well, I think the disagreement comes from the conclusion you draw about the incompatibility between Scripture and evolution.
From the evolutionary creation perspective evolution is the mechanism that God uses to achieve his purposes, so it does have a telos or end goal. I think is what @mitchellmckain was basically saying.
All of us who on the forum here who are Christians and who accept evolution believe there is no conflict between the two. That doesn’t mean there’s no difficulty in how we fit things together, there is, and it’s difficult work but BioLogos exists to help the Church do that.
I really appreciate the way you’ve come into the forum, and hope that through chatting with people on here you’ll come to see the harmony that can exist between the Bible and science, and so come to see yourself as a Christian again 
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Thanks for your kind response. In the second paragraph of my opening, I should have clarified that by evolution I meant evolution as it is understood by science today ie what the textbooks say
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What you’re effectively saying then is that god set us up to fail and when we do fail (which is 100% certain to happen), he punishes us. Free will, if it exists, only gives us a way to escape that punishment.
Most people would say the purest form of love is the love that a mother usually shows her children, where she will do anything to ensure the wellbeing of her children even to the point of sacrificing her own life. But a mother doesn’t choose these feelings since they usually already exist as instinct. She can only choose how she reacts. Also these are not uniquely human either since most mothers of most other species have the same instinct
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To be clear I was not raised Christian but rather by critics of Christianity (couple of psychology majors actually). I am and always have been a scientist first. I just happened to see some value in the Bible and Christianity despite of all of this. I sometimes describe myself as an agnostic theist because I don’t believe that objective knowledge of the existence of God is possible. Nevertheless, I am a 1.5 theist on the Dawkins scale because although I believe doubt is required by mental health I think living your life as if something were true is the only substantial meaning of the word “knowledge.”
My reasons for believing are found here.
I do not think there was ever a time when the members of the homo sapiens species or the organisms of any species never experienced death or suffering. Life and death, happiness and suffering are two sides of the same coin. Without death and suffering life would not exist. But I don’t think humanity should be reduced to that of a biological species. We are memetic organisms as well as genetic – children of both God and the apes with an inheritance from both.
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Hi Anthony. As with my earlier reply, I don’t agree with everything that you are saying here, so I’ll reply carefully.
God clearly gave us a choice, which means that he allows us to fail. Allowing us to fail is not the same as setting us up to fail. The thing is that sin (disobedience toward God) is not a one-and-done proposition. We all sin. It is a fact. God gives unconditional love and abundant opportunity for forgiveness. Free will exists to give love meaning. We could be programmed to “love” but it would mean nothing without a choice. That would reduce humans to meat robots.
When you say that we fail and he punishes us, what do you mean? You realize from the entirety of the remainder of scripture that God has provided a way out, right? We don’t disagree about this, do we? Faith in Jesus Christ’s resurrection and work on the cross are sufficient to overcome all of our failures.
So then, humans have been created with an appreciation for life, especially the lives of our own children. None of us should take issue with this. And, yes, most mothers will choose to protect and some will not. This is free will, right?
Right. Some aspects of humans are not uniquely human. These aspects are not differentiators between humans and animals, then, right? There are some aspects that are uniquely human, but some of them pertain to our relationship with God, alone.
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Interesting Mitchell. Thanks for sharing. I enjoyed your take on QM, especially.
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Perhaps there is some distinction to be made between what the science tells us, and some of the conclusions some scientists might draw from the science because of their presupposed naturalism?
On the point of human uniqueness you might find the following article by Jim Stump of BioLogos interesting - https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://biologos.org/post/scientific-testimonies-to-human-uniqueness/&ved=2ahUKEwja3Oypu8fmAhXToVwKHeHdBt4QFjAAegQIBhAC&usg=AOvVaw0s8lYuS2VOmgsU5ENAG-TC
As did I.
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Hi Anthony, I think it’s a shame that it seems your acceptance of evolutionary theory has lead you to give up your faith. I understand where youre coming from, but I think the problem lies in your apparent insistence that Genesis 1 & 2 must be understood literalistically, like a scientific textbook. I would suggest it wasnt written as such and was never meant to be understood in that way.
To me, the Genesis story of creation was written primarily as a polemic against other existing Near Eastern creation stories. For example the author describes the sun and moon simply as ‘lights’ with certain functions instead of naming them as sun and moon which would have been more natural. He likely did this because the sun, moon and stars were typically viewed as ‘gods’ to be worshipped in other stories, and he wanted to negate such a view - it was God who created these objects with specific functions - they are not gods.
There is also evidence of poetry and chiastic forms in the original Hebrew which we tend not to see in English. Further evidence that it should not be read literalistically.
That is not to say the text does not speak truths. For example, when the Big Bang Theory (as it became known) was first being proposed, a number of scientists openly said they didnt like the idea, compared to the Steady State Theory, because it agreed with Genesis 1, ie there was a definite beginning to the universe! Rather ironic that the proposer of the BBT was a priest, initially brashly rejected by Einstein.
In the end, your faith should not be based on a very specific understanding of Genesis, but rather on the truth spoken by Jesus of Nazareth. If you believe he spoke the truth about himself, why would you lose your faith?
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Genesis is the declaration of the one true God to the people Israel living in a world with hundreds of other gods. It’s not about science. People wouldn’t understand. Nevertheless – while not exact – the order of creation fits pretty well (humans last) with the evolutionary tree.
Edit - Once I was in a creative mood and tried to explain Genesis 1 with nowadays science by reading into it. Meaning, don’t take it too serious, but with a smile.
Hi Pculbert, thanks for your response. Evolution isn’t the only major reason I’m no longer a christian. There are other reasons too. I have no problem with Genesis containing metaphorical truths rather than scientific facts. But if it was really divinely inspired, I would expect the metaphoric truths to be consistent with science like what you said about the beginning of the Universe. I tried to distill these metaphorical truths from Genesis that are relevant to evolution, although I could have made errors. My argument isn’t affected by whether you believe Adam & Eve / the Garden of Eden / the snake etc really existed or whether the days of creation were literal days or epochs etc. What do you disagree with in the second paragraph of my original post?
I agree with you that the purpose of Genesis was not to present scientific facts. Please see my post directly above to Pculbert
Thanks for your response.
God clearly gave us a choice, which means that he allows us to fail. Allowing us to fail is not the same as setting us up to fail. The thing is that sin (disobedience toward God) is not a one-and-done proposition. We all sin. It is a fact.
Why do we all sin? I think you would say its human nature. Well if god used evolution to give us our nature and that nature makes it impossible to avoid sin, then isn’t god setting us up to fail? Note that I’m not saying that we aren’t responsible for our actions though
When you say that we fail and he punishes us, what do you mean?
By punishment, I refer to the eternal consequences of sin
You realize from the entirety of the remainder of scripture that God has provided a way out, right? We don’t disagree about this, do we? Faith in Jesus Christ’s resurrection and work on the cross are sufficient to overcome all of our failures.
Yes, I realize that he gives us a way to avoid the consequences of sin, but that is a separate issue. Besides not everyone gets the opportunity to take advantage of this e.g. Muslims who lived and died without ever hearing about Christianity
Right. Some aspects of humans are not uniquely human.
I guess my point here was that it may seem like humans are distinct from animals, but this only because our evolutionary ancestor species are extinct. If all these species were still alive, the distinction between human and animal would be much less clear than it is today. I just have this image of a father and son in my mind, where god considers the father an animal, but the son human. It seems completely bizarre because they would be the same species
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Gen-1 is framed in a Jewish understanding, God worked for 6 days, rested on the seventh. Symbolism for the Sabbath.
The days can be read as symbolism as well, every day ends with: And there was evening and there was morning, the x day. And it’s only at day-4 that:
14 - And God said, Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night.
A literal reading would mean a giant contradiction.
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Hi Laura, I’ve updated my original post to reflect the comments I’ve received and to try clarify my points. If you have time, I would really appreciate your thoughts?
what do you think god is trying to tell us with Genesis? And what do you think about the paragraph in my original post titled “metaphorical truths from genesis”
Thanks for your response
I do not think there was ever a time when the members of the homo sapiens species or the organisms of any species never experienced death or suffering. Life and death, happiness and suffering are two sides of the same coin. Without death and suffering life would not exist.
Isn’t death and suffering a consequence of sin and we all sin because of human nature? If god used evolution to give us our nature and if this nature is the reason we cannot avoid sinning, doesn’t this mean that god set us up to fail and when we do fail (which is 100% certain to happen), he punishes us. Free will, if it exists, only gives us a way to escape that punishment? This makes no sense to me
I have wrestled with the same question. My extended version would be, I am because 2 people had sex, I never had a say in that, never had the same chance as A&E in the Garden and thus I shall face death, meanwhile on my way to hell, if not…