Does Evolution Need God?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Yes, I agree I made a poor paraphrase, it should be “firstborn over all creation,” the Logos is the incorruptible image of God. But that was actually my point - the Logos must precede creation. The Logos is prerequisite for creation, including a bunch of photons we call light.

Here I think the context shows that Genesis 1 and John 1 are using light in different ways. Genesis is using light as a bunch of photons and also metaphorically: clarity, order, judgment, wisdom and progress. John 1 is only using light metaphorically and then adds:

9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

and then

14 The Word [ie. Logos] became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (NIV)

Therefore, “true light” = Logos.

The reason I parsed this out is to show that John 1 informs us concerning the Logos, but does not tell us anything about how Genesis uses physical light. I don’t need to force the creation of light into some scheme for the sake of John 1.

As for the Big Bang being ripe for a massive change I need only remind everybody that Aristotle gave way to Ptolemy, who after 1400 years gave way Copernicus and Kepler, who gave way to Newton, who gave way to Einstien, who gave way to Heisenburg. In many people’s eyes, Scholastic Christianity was discredited by their reliance on Aristotle when Aristotle was discredited by the Scientific Renaissance.

Even after the discovery of the Higgs particle, the force of gravity still has some serious issues working with the other three forces of nature. There are tons of open questions about cosmic inflation including more than a few physicists who don’t think it happened. Much of the data that is used to confirm things is at the validation level of science - the lowest level of science. It really is the least that I can say that the Big Bang is ripe for a paradigm shift.

All the best, Lee

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The context of the Beginning indicates that Genesis and John are speaking in spiritual, scientific, and philosophical terms. In Genesis God brought Order to “chaos” by introducing energy (light) which created natural law. In John the Logos brings moral order to the human universe through God’s Love and forgiveness.

Have you read Kuhn’s book about paradigm shift? If so you know it is basically about Einstein’s theory, E = mc squared. Now it seems that you are saying Einstein was wrong. That could always be true, but w2e know that at a basic level the equation is true. Gravity is created by mass bending time.

This is a stupendous discovery which contradicts the basic materialistic understanding of our universe held by science and philosophy. If you ask me which is more likely to be true, Einstein’s equation which has been well tested even though there are some questions on its edges, or those who want to raise questions about the equation because it does not confirm their world view.

“The detailed particle physics mechanism responsible for inflation is unknown.” When God spoke energy into existence matter and anti-matter exploded and the universe expanded. No detailed mechanism needed.

“Energy = mass/ the speed of light squared” unites energy, mass, time, and space (speed) in the same equation, which makes them “relational,” mistakenly called “relative.” As you know according to the old paradigm time and space are not related, absolute, even though this is not true, and there is no going back to the old paradigm, even though very few people or so it seems really understand the new paradigm.

So we have the sad state of affairs where most people still cling to the old Absolutist paradigm, generally those who are Conservative. Many others have made a change to the pseudo-Einsteinian Relativist paradigm who are called Liberal. Again very few have accepted the Relational worldview which is at the heart of Christianity. So we go about butting our heads against the wall of Western Dualism instead of seeking to solve the puzzle of the One and the Many or the Trinity.

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Hello Roger, I’ve enjoyed our discussion and appreciate that you have called me out on some of my unorthodox communication. I think we are much closer than the last couple of exchanges make out.

I agree with Hyers - "The Narrative Form of Genesis 1: Cosmogonic, Yes; Scientific, No” - that the Genesis account is a cosmology against all other cosmologies. It can be taken and understood on its own terms without harmonizing with science.

The possibility of harmonizing with science comes in when we recognize that to be inspired it must have come as some sort of vision from God - the observations are received rather than created by the author. In that case, we have a phenomenological description of the creation of Earth if not the whole universe in the ancient Hebrew idiom. In order to have this, the vision must remain within the bounds of an ancient Hebrew that God has prepped for this message.

Unless we have nearly everything picture-perfect in the science we are harmonizing, then we will probably introduce distortions, just like the early fathers did embracing Platonic philosophy and medieval Christians embracing Aristotle. And that is what we are in for because all of science is made of models and all models are wrong somewhere.

E=mc squared is a fine model. I personally have no qualms with it. But it is a model and at the edges it may not apply. In the 19th century we would be defending Newton’s mechanics with just as much gumption as E=mc squared now. All I’m saying is that Schrodinger’s Cat is still a thing and Big Bang cosmology hits a lot of the concerning characteristics that John Ioannidis has pointed out in “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”. I hope the Big Bang cosmology can stand the test of time, but I’m not putting all my eggs in that basket.

I fully agree.
All the best, Lee

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Thank you for your response. It has been a long time since I read the excellent book by Conrad Hyers and I which I still had it. However there are some issues with what you say.

The problem that YEC has with Genesis is that Fundamentalists decided that the Bible is the incarnate Word of God, when it is clear that Jesus Christ is the Incarnate Word (Logos) of God and Jesus is not the Bible. All or almost all of the problems of evangelicalism came from this basic error.

I have recently become aware though Academia.edu that evangelicals have developed an improper understanding the Trinity which subordinates the Son and the Spirit to the Father, which justifies the eternal subordination of women to men. See Wayne Grudem. Are you aware of this?

While Genesis 1 can be “taken and understood on its own terms without harmonizing with science,” the fact is that it does need to be harmonized with science because Genesis and good science and philosophy are all seeking to understand the Beginning of the universe and the Beginning of Reality. They can be and they must be harmonized if humans are to live in One Reality, One world, unlike to fragmented, broken world we find ourselves in today.

Even though Christians did not understand the scientific basis of the Beginning, Augustine understood that the Beginning meant that time was tied to the Creation and because the universe is not e4ternal, it is not God. The Creation and the Beginning provided the cosmogonic foundation for modern science. The Beginning and the Big Bang are harmonized because they are true based on the facts as we know them, not because we want them to be.

The final piece that made the Big Bang possible was Einstein’s theory, which has been well tested and proven over the past 100 years. Even if the Big Bang has some holes and people have some questions as to how E = mc squared interacts with the quantum world which is a whole new kettle of fish, I find no serious reason to doubt the basic soundness of the equation and how it underpins the Big Bang.

This does not mean that I am putting all my eggs in one basket, but it does mean that I am affirming the truth, whether it be scientific truth or spiritual truth as God blesses me to see it. God dives us a brain to use to the best of our ability and we need to use it, even though we know it is not perfect.

1 Cor 13:13 And now these three remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the greatest of these is Love.

Please forgive the sermon.

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Sorry I haven’t responded sooner - a busy beginning to the school year.

Yes, I grew up in Baptist churches that had this view. It became impossible for me to reconcile the New Testament Jesus with reality until I understood Him as the Logos incarnate. That has been the key that linked the Old Testament to the New as well.

My understanding of the Logos came from a philosophy of science perspective, so I was prepared to be an unorthodox believer at one point. I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the Church Fathers I’ve looked at - and all those called Apologists - had a very clear idea of Jesus as the Logos incarnate - even Tertullian, famous for asking, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”

I hadn’t heard that particular justification. I know Catholics and Eastern Orthodox regard male priests as part of the deposit of faith, but I think this has been mostly in obedience to the Mosaic model rather than a Trinitarian argument. Is something like this article from an Orthodox source what you had in mind? “Ontological Equality and Hierarchical Subordination - blogs.ancientfaith.com”

Special Relativity (E=mc2) has come up between us as a metaphor for Einstein’s theories, but if we are to be more precise, the real issues in Big Bang cosmology are with General Relativity: Inflation, Cosmological Constant, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, etc. (“How Do We Know The Age Of The Universe?” - forbes.com is a good overview.)

In my opinion, the undetectable Dark Energy that makes up 68% of the universe is awfully close to scientists saying, “and then a miracle happened.” How would somebody falsify this hypothesis? Alternatively, what if this dark stuff has an effect on light, such as increasing the redshift of light traveling through super long distances of open space? That alone would require a major overhaul of everything we think we know about the Big Bang. What if that turns our cosmology toward the Big Bounce or an oscillating universe?

As for the biblical text, “En arche…” (In [the] beginning) of Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 doesn’t clearly assert itself in this debate. Without the definite article [the], the first sentence can be taken in a variety of ways that could be compatible with many cosmologies. What comes after that is more tightly constrained to the creation of the Earth - certain things have to happen in a certain order.

I see your point. It is a good point. If the universe is not eternal, it is clearly not God. Theologically, a Big Bang type of cosmology is preferred because it undercuts monism/pantheism.

That could change my commitment to the Big Bang.

Not at all, I found it very enlightening.

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20 posts were split to a new topic: Relationships within the Trinity

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It is the same false argument against the equality of women and others based on terrible theology. Jesus Christ accepted the leadership and guidance of the Father because He choose to do so out of His own uniquely free will, not because He had to, which would have been if He were subordinate to the Father.

Jesus is the Savior because He freely chose to live without sin and to die for our sins. Again this is not possible if He were subordinate or if He did so because He chose to be subordinate. Using the Trinity to justify the subordination of women and other “minorities” could some “Christians” straight to Hell.

We need to be careful about making statements outside our fields. The Greek word arche does not mean “a beginning,” but “the Beginning.” I know because I checked it out.

I do not agree. The framework of the Big Bang theory still stands. I have found no one who denies it, including Hawking, The article that you cited discuses the age of the universe and how scientists use different methods to determine this all which confirms the Big Bang.

I agree that dark matter/energy and that whole discussion is a problem, but it does not warrant nullifying Einstein. It is the details that are the problem and while that may be serious we cannot throw the whole concept of E = mc squared out because we do not like the concept of dark matte/energy, so come of the equations do not quite work out.

Since Einstein’s theories are relatively new, I expect it is more likely that we do not understand them or misapply them than they are wrong, plus the fact that the Big Bang is based on much more than just Einstein like background radiation.

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What about “In beginning…” without an article at all? That is literally the text in both Hebrew and Greek. Alternatively, to avoid our English biases about the word ‘beginning’, it could be “In commencement…” The range of meaning possible is common fodder in the commentaries - Kidner for instance.

Two methods precisely. The only two methods. I can’t call the first strong. It all hinges on using relatively rare SN1a Supernovas as a consistent light source or “standard candle” to precisely measure distances. Just to make that clear, we are using exploding stars. Are you really sure there is nothing we could learn that will change our minds about white dwarf stars exploding? What about finding that there are different types of SN1a?

The second method has some assumptions that make it really weak, such as maybe we don’t have telescopes that see far enough to see the oldest Globular Clusters or maybe the way the universe recycles star material is giving us a false idea of age. Our solar system is at least a second-generation star system, maybe its a third or fourth?

It is not that I am against the Big Bang, it is the most fantastic cosmology out there. But it could also go the way of the luminiferous aether that they were so sure about in the 19th century. My belief in it is partially suspended. I won’t consider it part of any core belief unless it is crystal clear it should be.

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That would not be a grammatical English translation. Whether a noun is determined is part of the meaning, but it is not always overtly marked in a given language’s grammar. In Hebrew poetry, determined nouns are often unmarked, but their determined state can be assumed from context.

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Didn’t you just propose a gap for a god to fill?

I think you are saying that the prebiotic-to-biotic transition is unexplained, and I agree. Do you have specific technical reasons for doubting that it could have happened without divine intervention?

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We probably mean different things by the phrase “divine intervention”. I am not thinking of God waving a wand (or speaking some words) and poof - a new chemical structure or process suddenly appears de novo, that could not have done so without “magic”. All events in the natural world have natural explanations, all of which can also be attributed by the believer to divine intervention, in the sense of God continuing to sustain and perfect His creation. In that sense, all of life’s history required divine intervention, from the first endosymbiotic event to the whole genome duplication that produced vertebrates to the development of consciousness. The more miraculous the transition appears to be (as in the above cases) the more we can see the hand of God, even though each can be “explained” by natural mechanisms. The origin of an evolutionary mechanism with a sufficiently high degree of replication and translation fidelity to allow for Darwinian evolution to work is one of those transitions. As I stated in the post, I think that eventually its likely we will find some as yet unimagined pathway starting with pre-biotic chemical systems that manage (with a great deal of “lucky random chance”) to spontaneously allow the “emergence” of a recognizable process for high fidelity replication of the system. When this happens, there will be a triumphant announcement that we don’t need God or miracles, because the natural mechanism has been found. But if we believe (as I do) that God uses chance, emergence, and His other tools (like evolution itself) to achieve His purposes, then we can join in the celebration of the scientific discovery while giving thanks to His awesome power and abundant care for His creation, and His creatures, like us, who have evolved to be able to understand to some degree, the mechanisms of that awesome power.

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I agree, @sygarte. I was musing a bit yesterday what that means in the Calvinist-Arminian views of theology, as I tend toward the Arminian side and maybe a bit toward some open theism ideas, but can see Calvinism as perhaps having a better argument when looking at God’s hand in creation. I can see God’s foreknowledge being present in the first moment of creation of the way things would unfold.

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And given the vast influence of god-as-an-explanation in evangelicalism, indeed its constant presence in this forum, with its claim (sometimes even explicit claim) that scientific explanation rules out god’s action, this announcement would be accurate and reasonable. Of course, believers like you and, in another time, like me, would scoff at the buffoonery of claiming that any scientific explanation implies that “we don’t need god.” But you could not deny or escape the fact that explanations damage most of the gods of conservative Christianity.

Moreover, given the daily triumphant announcements by your fellow believers asserting the exact converse of the triumphant announcement you bemoan, I can’t really take your mockery of “triumphant announcements” seriously without holding scientists and humanists to a far higher standard than you or I hold Christians to. I’m glad to do that, but I won’t let it go unsaid.

And finally, while again I thought and wrote very much like you do once, in particular when talking about “miracles.” The problem is not that your beliefs don’t make sense–I think they do. The problem is that neither you nor I own the prerogative to redefine what others mean by “miracle.”

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Very true. It’s our shoe to wear (or cheap tuxedo that keeps getting photoshopped onto us). Biologos is a blip standing against that cultural avalanche. Lord, help us!

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Steve, I much appreciate this post of yours. We go back a ways, and I have always respected and admired your acumen and willingness to engage, even when some of our interactions (usually on other fora) became just a bit heated. It’s good to see you here, where I have just returned after too long an absence.

Yes, I agree with all of that, including the last line. And I think that’s OK. Nothing is easy about this entire subject, and I believe we need to acknowledge and respect the difficulty we have in making progress and learning what it is we really believe. I have a book coming out soon that details my own decades-long path to faith. To sum it all up, I owe my belief in Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior to the mercy and grace of the Holy Spirit. All the rest are details. Peace.

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Whoa, Sy, you have already forgotten the first rule of Fight Club?

I drift in and out. The @moderators deserve some peace every now and then. They tried to bribe me with a Chick-Fil-A gift card.

I think one of my main challenges lately is whether and how to believe someone when they say what they believe. I’m not at all sure how many Christians believe what they say they believe. Complicated machines, us humans.

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I feel much the same way. Just as I suspect that nearly all flat-earthers are have tongues firmly in cheek, I wonder if YECers are 90 percent holding to it on Sunday as a social marker, but live life with no real conflict when they look at the Grand Canyon or see a Hubble photo of galaxies 12 billion light years distant. And truth is that the irrational part of religious belief is a strain at times, I think, for even the most pious.

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I was miffed that the additional Hobby Lobby gift package didn’t push you over. I knew that I should have included a free year’s subscription to the daily doctrinal bulletin of my East Prussian Anabaptist Order of the Right Hand - something that you couldn’t say ‘no’ to so easily anyway. Bulk Chick Tracts - the extended witness bundle? Creation Club membership? You’ve got a weakness somewhere and we’re gonna find it.

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I always hated that film.

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Amateur. Just give him a haggis. :wink:

On a more serious note, sometimes I think there’s a fine line between believing something and wanting to believe something, or even believing that you should believe it.

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