I realize that this website claims that evolution is true. However, there are some “serious problems” with science fact and evolution and the big bang. There are also “serious problems” with being a Christian and believe in God’s Word while believing in Evolution. My challenge to you is to “logically” discuss evolution and the big band using “only science fact” NO theories that violate the laws of science. And as a Christian how can you support disagreeing with God’s Creation account in the Holy Bible? Be honest, I don’t care about opinions that are what you feel is correct. Be factual and supply evidence for evolution and the big bang that is truth not lies. If you believe in evolution and the big bang, explain why you think God’s Word is not true.
Hello, and welcome to the forum! You’ve come to the right place if you want to see what evidence there is for evolution … much more than will be crammed into a thread, much less than a few posts. But nonetheless, I’m sure many here will be happy to oblige you if you can hang around to listen!
Meanwhile, You can check out many Biologos articles, like this one that summarize the evidence for evolution.
Your “question” there is really an embedded statement, and one that is demonstrably false, as shown by the mere existence of believers here who very much believe God is a God of Truth. One could just as well ask of you: Why do you wish to package falsehood as “God’s Word”? It’s precisely because believers here believe that God is true that they have left behind the teachings of those who try to insert so much falsehood into it.
In terms of hermeneutics, texts are incapable of being “true or false” in and of themselves in an absolute sense.
This appears to have been proven mathematically, at least in our dimension by the mathematician Kurt Godel, whom many of us discovered in the work, Godel (sorry no umlaut; my name in English needed to buy a vowel without umlauts) Escher and Bach.
The closest things that we have found to be “true” are mathematical concepts but even those can falter as we reach the limit in the mathematical realm, i.e. Zeno’s paradox. Infinity is shielded from us and we do not know what happens at the limit.
I think many folks on here could discuss Genesis from only a scientific viewpoint to the extent of our knowledge with ease and make a devastating case against the Biblical rendition but that does not mean Genesis is false.
"And as a Christian how can you support disagreeing with God’s Creation account in the Holy Bible? "
This is a straw man because this is not what such folks are doing at all; instead they are expounding a viewpoint that attempts to “save” Christianity from imploding upon itself but noting that all knowledge is at the very least, assisted by the Spirit and that therefore, interpretation is higher than the text.
Jews tend to have no problem with this aspect even though they lack the trinity. One of the most famous lines in all of Jewish non-canonical scripture is:
“My children have defeated me”. You can easily google this line but it is similar to what Christ said about using grain stores on the Sabbath if one is starving.
The emphasis on science facts over theory seems strange to me. In science everything is provisional though the current consensus is always your best bet. For example when my wife’s grandfather came out to California with heart issues he went to see specialists at Stanford. The best medical advice of the time encouraged him to partake of cream, butter and lard to lube those arteries. Everything is open to revision as more is learned. If only we as a species were more that way ourselves. But that is the reason for checking results and peer review. Science allows us to do better.
God’s word in multiple places says that the earth is fixed and does not move. Do you believe this? If not, explain why you think God’s Word is not true.
That advice might be coming full circle. Many of us seek out lard for recipe purposes and yes, for health purposes, and it is hard to find. Every bit of lard means less need for starch, which seems to be more and more, the true food to demonized but it’s all easy for us to say since we have sufficient food generally to waste it and are not starving. Heights fell dramatically when humans turned to agriculture and caries became even more part of life but agricultural also paved the way for cities and the developed knowledge that was possible with the uniting of many brilliant minds, as well as a system of writing so we could remember.
Many hunter-gatherer societies, even partial ones, seem to lack writing which is essential for creating manuals. Partially nomadic societies also often engage in slash and burn environmental management to the extent that there were far, far more trees in the United States in 1800 than in 1587 but that’s just an aside. Slash and burn is fine in proper context as is all industrialization.
“Evolution or Creation” is a logical and theological error. The Bible consistently affirms that God is at work in events that happen following natural laws, as well as in the occasional miraculous event. The correct question is “To what extent, if any, has God used evolution in the process of creation?” Evolutionary approaches are the best way that we have to design certain things; claims that evolution is an opposite of design are incorrect.
If you reject evolution and the big bang, then you need to explain why you think that God’s word is not true. The Bible has numerous statements that you must be truthful. Likewise, we are commanded to do good work, in ways that honor God. If you study science - the physical evidence relating to God’s ordinary patterns of running the universe - then you find that the evidence strongly supports evolution by natural selection as being a good description of the ordinary way in which new kinds of organism are created. And the evidence from astronomy strongly matches the Big Bang model as a physical description of the origin of our universe.
Of course, as already pointed out, our best scientific understanding is always subject to change based on new data and new ideas. But the approach taken by current young-earth and antievolutionary arguments is to attack what has already been explained well by conventional science, rather than to make a serious effort at building and testing a coherent alternative.
If you have questions about specific aspects of biological evolution or big bang cosmology, asking those will clarify the responses. But there are so many false claims that evolution doesn’t work that it’s hard to know what you’re wondering about. For example, the second law of thermodynamics poses no problem at all for evolution, but it does man that global flood models do not work.
[Keep in mind also that opinions expressed on the forum should not be equated with BioLogos’s position.]
What laws of science?
Looks like somebody wants us to do their homework for them.
As a Christian, I agree with God’s creation account in the Holy Bible. And as a scientist, I agree with the scientific findings of very ancient universe, ancient earth and evolution.
I accept “evolution and the big bang”… as part of God-given science. And I rejoice that God’s word is “inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness”. (2 Tim 3:16) In other words, that both are (to use your word) “true”.
Both science and scripture. Both true. Yes to evolution, and God’s word is true.
Welcome here to explore how we can simultaneously love science and love scripture!
Perhaps you could clarify what one of those serious problems is. Chances are other people are evaluating the situation differently.
Please clarify what truth claim you are equating with “God’s Word.” I think you will find that most people here simply disagree with your interpretation of God’s Word, they won’t disagree with the statement “God’s Word is true.”
Do you believe that God can providentially intervene in his children’s lives?
Okay, I’ll take your statement “God is a God of Truth”. They why would disregard some of God’s Word as truth? There is no falsehood in my statement. Supply “proof” of evolution, if you cannot then you must accept Creation. Of course, one would wonder why someone would deny God Created in lieu of evolution? Great attempt at saying literally nothing of value! Unless of course you can “support” your statement and not contradict Creation. Otherwise, you do not believe God Created. God Bless.
Show the verses… BTW, the topic was Creation vs Evolution. But, I’ll address your thought that the earth is fixed, show me where.
You can disagree with me all you want. However, God’s Word says God (actually the Word) created in 6-days. Not billions of years, not starting as a single cell. God’s Word says He created all life that exists, not one life and let it evolve. In addition, the fossil record disputes evolution without a doubt. You cannot find a “single” transitory fossil between a kind to a kind. The claims of those fossils turned out to be lies perpetrated by the scientists involved…
The Bible tells us that He has, no problem there. But, this has nothing to do with the topic…
Making a case and using facts are two completely different things. Sure anyone can make a case on anything they want - Look at Critical Race Theory, nothing but lies. Complete and total historical mistruth and racist. None the less they are forcing it on school children. To be Christians and honest, we should use facts. Christianity will NOT implode on itself, we need to trust that God’s Word is true. Science supports it, why not you? DNA is absolute undisputable proof of intelligence, design and creation. Evolution doesn’t even get past the first test in the laws of physics… And, just so you know - interpretation is NOT higher than God’s Word. God’s Word is God’s Word, not to be changed or manipulated based on one’s desires. Plain and simple if you do not believe God’s Word, can you call yourself a Christian? Think about it.
I can’t find where you’ve made any kind of case using anything more than innuendo. On what basis do you insist on getting better than you give?
You’re tackling a fairly complex subject here, and one where there is sadly a lot of misinformation being taught in many churches, both about science and about the Bible. It’s very often the case that Christians who believe that creation and evolution are two polar opposites have serious misconceptions about what the theory of evolution actually claims, about how science actually works, and about what the Bible actually says.
First of all, in terms of science, there are at least two separate issues under discussion: the age of the earth, and biological evolution itself. These are often conflated by creationists but they really need to be treated independently because they involve completely separate mechanisms and they impact our understanding of the Bible in different ways.
As far as the age of the earth is concerned, there is no question about it whatsoever: it is old, specifically, it is 4.54±0.05 billion years old. This is not some kind of made-up figure; it is determined by measuring things – primarily, though not exclusively, through radiometric dating. Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation that gets taught in many churches about radiometric dating. For example, you may have heard it said that it is “unreliable” and that different methods often disagree with each other. Unfortunately, the extent to which this is the case is greatly exaggerated by those who are trying to argue for a six thousand year old earth. The fact of the matter is that there are tens of thousands of measurements published in the scientific literature every year where there is no disagreement whatsoever, and in the best cases the agreement between different methods is closer than one part in a thousand. This is something that you would never see if the techniques were so unreliable that they couldn’t differentiate between thousands and billions.
As Christians we need to be honest about this: the Bible demands that our approach to measurement must be accurate and honest (Deuteronomy 25:13-16), and the only way that the earth could be only six thousand years old, and that creation could have taken place over six 24-hour days, is if God had created vast swathes of overwhelming, insistent, completely unambiguous, and extraordinarily self-consistent evidence for billions of years of history that had never happened. There are Bible verses that may provide a key to reconciling the long ages indicated by the measurements to Genesis 1 – for example, 2 Peter 3:8 and Psalm 90:4 – but I am not aware of any Bible verses that could justify the idea of God creating evidence for a history of events that never happened.
Dating using (not that anyone uses them) tungsten-180, bismuth-209, or tellurium-128 can’t, but that’s because their half-lives are over 10^18 years, so it would be the equivalent of not being able to use carbon-14 to tell whether something died 1 millisecond or 15 minutes ago (for W-180, Bi-209’s half life is ~11x that of W-180), or for Te-128, 600 femtoseconds vs. 600 microseconds.
Those, by the way are comparable in scale to “K-Ar dating gives 50,000 years instead of 50 years on recent lava flows.” Because that is the difference between 99.9999972% left and 99.9972% left.
Yes, but tungsten-180, bismuth-209 and tellurium-128 aren’t used in radiometric dating. Let’s stick to discussing elements that are and not get overly pedantic about things.