That is still the case with me at times, but I find it helpful to focus on those things we agree on, and when issues we disagree on come up, offer my opinion if asked, but do more listening than talking. At times it is more appropriate to ask questions like some variation of “What leads you to that conclusion?” than to say “You’re wrong and here is why…” as the first allows reflection and discussion, valuing the participants of the discussion. That is true not only with science issues but life in general. Not that I am always successful in following that. It also allows the other person to ask similar questions of me, and they are more likely to not take offense since they asked.
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I hereby affirm that I have never eaten bouc au lait.
Very insightful thoughts and questions, by the way. A few initial thoughts I might give, in case helpful; I had a quasi-similar experience, though my younger background where YEC was presented gave me just enough of a critical mind when I went into my biology / biochemistry classes in college. I was completely open to understanding evolution and Darwinism, but I simply asked hard questions with a critical mind and ended up remaining a skeptic of Darwinian evolution.
That leads to my first question, if it isn’t a dumb question or if I don’t Sound like I am insulting your intelligence: but are you distinguishing between what is generally referred to as microevolution and macroevolution? There is hard and fast, observable, repeatable, testable evidence for what we call microevolution that is completely granted by all sides, including those who espouse young earth creationism. I just want to make sure you don’t make the mistake that I have occasionally seen people make, where they see that kind of evidence for changes overtime, and think that this kind of evidence is in direct conflict with biblical or even young earth creationist ideas.
I did experiments on fruit flies in the lab in my undergrad studies, and literally watched microevolution happening right before my eyes. But I personally remain utterly skeptical of is that natural forces by themselves given enough time random mutations, and natural selection, can eventually turn in amoeba into a dolphin. I don’t think this is controversial to say: but evidence for microevolution is indeed observable, testable, repeatable, and indisputable. Evidence for macroevolution (the ape ancestors becoming humans) is not of this kind. It is deduced or inferred from what we can test & observe, but it is not direct evidence in the same fashion - we can’t put them in a lab and watch the process repeat.
If you’re still wrestling with these questions in general, I’d encourage you to Explore other voices and other perspectives that have a similar critical eye. Hopefully not sounding too much like a fan, and hopefully approriate to recommend resources that are against Biologos’ own position here, but I have in general (with some exceptions) been rather impressed by those that align with the intelligent design movement. They tend to be very science focused, without letting their science be tainted by philosophical or religious commitments dash some of their participants are Jewish and agnostic as I recall… but they maintain a solid skepticism about blind darwinian forces not due to religious commitments but based on what they see in the science.
A second question - It is important to distinguish between guided evolution, and blind darwinian evolution. In fact, some of those who align with the intelligent design movement completely affirm almost all aspects of what we refer to as Darwinian evolution including that everyone has descended from single celled organisms. I believe Michael Behe is in this category (as, tentatively, CS Lewis appeared to be at times). He simply does not believe that blind, unguided, darwinian processes of natural selection choosing from random mutations is remotely a satisfactory explanation for the remarkable and perfect designs of biological machines, including us. Back when I was younger that is what generally was meant by theistic evolution - people that believed That evolution happened as commonly understood, but that God was very directly intervening in the process, accomplishing the remarkable design that blind nature could never have done by itself undirected or unguided. But given the various philosophical categories today, that puts Behe and those like him squarely in what we now call the “intelligent design” camp.
This I think is especially insightful, and I think you are actually quite correct. If God was not involved in the process in any direct way and our current existence is simply the end result of a blind, uncaring, unintentional random process, guided only by what factors happened to allow our ancestors to reproduce better or faster than their competitors, Then you are absolutely right. Are not special, there is nothing inherently different about us than an amoeba, and love, passion nobility, compassion, courage are all just randomly and unintended chemical processes, not categorically different than our urge to burp or scratch an itch. This is one of my biggest critiques about atheism in general.
But even if you do become convinced of evolution, you do not need to embrace the kind of evolution that insists that it is a blind, practically atheistic process. You can recognize that God actually and intentionally was working through it to design you to be just as you are, with all of the love, compassion, rationality, and all the rest that truly does indeed make you in his very intended image. Belief in macroevolution does not require you to embrace full fledged atheism.
Alternatly though, as it sounds like you’re still exploring all the options… as a minority voice of Scientific Darwinian Skepticism here on the biologos forum that people kindly tolerate (thanks everyone! 
), I would certainly encourage you to explore some of those other minority scientists such as those assoicated with intelligent design that are not simply forcing their science into the Bible’s literalistic words and categories, But who are recognizing serious problems with Darwinian evolution based on their examination of the science. If I may be permitted, the two first books in that topic I would recommend would be Michael Behe’s “Darwin’s Black Box” or Steven Meyers’ “Signature in the Cell.”
I share this simply to make sure you really are aware of all the various intellectual options - I say this as it sounds like it appears to you at present that there are only two options - YEC with all its potential problems, or full-fledged practically atheistic blind Darwinism. There really are options between those two extremes; an evolutionary creationism as many folks here espouse, that God was somehow undetectably behind the whole process, in such a way as you still are special, made in his image, and love and all the other noble human emotions really are good and real… and there also is the intelligent design option that, while not denying common descent or many aspects of evolution in general, still recognizes that our human complexity and design is simply of the sort that blind process just cannot achieve on their own.
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I think this is like saying the Bible is more than ink and paper. Of course things are not just what they are made of. Just because something is important doesn’t mean we have to believe it is made of something else. Can you imagine someone claiming Bibles are not made of ink and paper but of some magical heavenly substance?
…from a previous discussion…
Oh… and I happen to think the idea of love comes from God not evolution – an inheritance of the mind by which we are the children of God rather than children of apes. The latter only applies to the body which is not the most important part of what we are.
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I can sympathize with your situation, and may God bless you in the journey.
I too was raised to take the first 11 chapters of Genesis as literal history, but I came to realize that viewing it literally is not consistent with the evidence God has given us in creation or with the text.
When I realized that there are two creation stories with different orders and methods of creation (one ending in Genesis 2.4a and the other beginning in Genesis 2.4b), it became very clear to me that those early chapters are not to be taken as literal history.
12 posts were merged into an existing topic: YEC, ID and other sidebars
Please stay on topic to the original post.
Thanks
Thanks for the post. I attended a lecture weekend last fall at a conservative college that had another subject for the topic. But for the Sunday morning devotional, the speaker talked about how to interpret the first couple chapters of Genesis. He made some remarks about the “six days” working their way from one slightly broader topic–heaven and earth – down to the main point on the sixth day which he emphasized was not so much a literal day but just the reaching of the high point of creation–humankind. Afterwards someone sitting near me came up and asked me how to spell “Gilgamesh” so that they could look up the Epic of Gilgamesh.
There are other conservative Christians around who discuss these issues.
But don’t go from one extreme to the other. You are “special” because God valued you and --really --everyone else enough to send His Son to take the penalty for your sin. Being “created” by a seemingly longer process ( nine months more or less) – does not mean God had no inkling of it or that humankind has become less special. It’s not a black-and-white matter — that is " special" or “nahh…not so special”.
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I don’t think his perspective had anything to do with whether or not there was a literal Adam. It had more to do with the goal of creation (or one of them). And possibly also with the main topic of the biblical text. You would have to take the rest of your argument up with him. It’s a big topic, for sure.
- So, the premise as stated in the original question:
“…that God didn’t literally kill an animal to clothe them covering their nakedness…”
explicitly assumes that the killing of the animals was for the purpose of providing clothing from their skins?
Evolution does not require believing Adam and Eve was not real. I believe they were real. More importantly, Christianity is not defined by your particular theology. There is nothing about Adam and Eve in the creed of Nicaea 325 AD, nor does it say the second coming is a literal physical event.
And from this false claim of number 1 you concoct and an elaborate rabbit hole of wilder and wilder fantastic claims for which no logical reasoning has been presented but sounds like nothing but a fabrication of fevered imagination.
No this does not follow logically. Perhaps you have left out a whole bunch of premises which you accept and which are not in the creed of Nicaea 325 AD needed to make a logical connection.
People may or may not believe in a literally understanding of this but it has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.
Now of all the things you have made up this is one is downright offensive. And worthy of having your post removed from this thread.
I disagree. I think you can and you do.
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This is important!
GRZ, since “conservative” doesn’t mean what it used to, this is something you may not have encountered before, but it’s been the defining statement of Christianity for well over a millennium and a half:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth,
and of all things visible and invisible;
and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the uniquely-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all ages:
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
begotten, not created, being of one essence with the Father,
by Whom all things were made;
Who for us humans and for our salvation came down from heaven
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary,
and was made Man;
and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate – He suffered and was buried – and on the third day He rose again in accordance with the scriptures
and ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father,
and He shall come again with glory to judge both the living and dead,
Whose Kingdom shall have no end;
and we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life,
Who proceeds from the Father,
Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified,
Who spoke by the prophets.
And we believe one catholic and apostolic church,
we acknowledge on Baptism for the remission of sins
and we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.
GRZ, I put the (first) important part, as far as feeling special goes, in bold. To restate it in colloquial language:
He Who was God, on behalf of us human types and in order to rescue us, transferred Himself from the heavenly realm to this earthly one and became human flesh by the Power of the Holy Spirit in a virgin mother, Mary, and became a man.
That alone makes you special: the infinite Son of God stepped out of His infinite heaven and didn’t just come to Earth, He came and restricted Himself to the very finite nature of a human being – became one of us, for us . . . and you are definitely one of “us”!
Dear GRZ, I have worked out a translation from Hebrew of Gen. 1 - 7, and come to the conclusion that an old rabbinical interpretation got things right. I’ll be happy to send it to you. It clears up a lot. Please write to me at roy.a.clouser@gmail.com
Guess who said this: When I consider the way the Creator has impressed laws on matter to achieve his ends, it seems to me that species have been created through secondary causes like the birth of each individual. (That’s not word for word but it’s close.) The quote is from Darwin.
Isn’t that the truth. conservative theologically is not related to conservative politics, and primarily is concerned with orthodox beliefs. a conservative interpretation of the Bible is true the original intent of the author, whereas a liberal interpretation takes liberties with it. Thus ironically, a literal interpretation of a passage meant to be metaphor or symbolic may be rightly called liberal. It gets fuzzy, and for the purposes of this thread, such issues may take time, study and life experience.
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Yep – theologically, YEC aren’t just liberals, they’re radical liberals because they refuse to follow the grammatical-historical method.
And IMO they engender fear: if the Bible has to be tossed if there’s so much as one factual error, people are going to live in fear that an error may be found! The conservative theological position engenders hope because it puts the foundation where it belongs, on the Incarnation, specifically the Cross and Resurrection. A theological conservative will say, “So what if evolution is true? Jesus still died for us and rose from the dead!”
Hello Roae,
I have been away fro Biologos for much longer (almost a month) than is good for me. Sorry I missed getting involved earlier, but then again, I do believe that God does tweak His world in very nearly unnoticeable ways that do have some significant effects.
I was born into a YEC family, wound heavily into a particular branch of the Lutheran church that absolutely insisted on complete literal truth of all scripture - Wisconsin Synod Lutheran, which broke from Missouri Synod because Missouri Synod was too liberal. I was two years into pre-ministerial college when I transferred out to study mathematics and physics, because I was much more interested in those quantitative and observational areas than in the study of languages.
It took me many years, and much exposure to other ideas, and meeting good Christians with different interpretations to bring me to my current state of belief and understanding.
The first point in any religious belief has to be whether to believe that God exists, or not. I do believe that God exists, and, like St. Roymond said in one of his posts, that He created the universe. However, it is a lack of observable fact that God, if, as I believe, He did create this universe, chose not to leave any unambiguous, observable evidence of His existence in His creation. So how do I know that God exists? I have had personal experiences, and felt personal relationship things that convince me personally that God exists. These experiences are not in any way proof that I can give to any one else, for someone to perform a repeatable experiment to show God’s existence.
That leads to the next major point: If God exists, as I believe, and if God did create the universe, did God now what He was doing, or did He create something that has run out of His control? My choice on this question is to believe that God knew exactly what He was doing. I do not believe God created something that He didn’t understand, and is off running in some direction that He hadn’t known would come about. There is support for believing this is based in modern cosmology. We now understand that the universe is a space-time continuum, three dimensions of space and one of time, and that time as we observe it is a part of the created universe. That is, God the Creator of the universe exists outside of the space and time that we experience in this universe.
What does this imply? That God is there, before the universe was created (whether that was 6000 years ago or more than 13 billion years ago), and also is there after the universe’s time has run out (whether that is a few, or a few hundred years, or a trillion years from now). And I cannot believe that God created a universe where He couldn’t see everything that was going on, and see how it all came out, and that He still said in Genesis that it was good. From this perspective I do have a different take on the human interpretations of the reasons for the fall, and the existence of evil in the world. I do believe that God created this world in this little corner of His universe, to provide some of the people that He loves with an opportunity to live for a few decades in a place where they have to make choices based on uncertain information, that those choices will have real consequences, but the consequences will have a limited scope of influence - we humans might be able to destroy our planet, will have to develop a whole lot more capability than we can currently imagine to even destroy our solar system, and can never cause the destruction of our whole galaxy, much less the univesrse of many galaxies.
There are two directions for the next thinking. One is to look at the universe, study our world and everything else we can see to understand what is this universe that God created. The other is a philosophical investigation, thinking about how this universe fits into the whole scheme of things (where does God live, why would He bother to create a different place and put us here for a limited time?). Science done by a religious person does tend to be the way that the first question is addressed, and a lot of discussion on Biologos does get into the questions of what the world we observe tells us about the Creator of that world. For the philosophical question of why would God create this universe rather than just create us in Heaven and let us live there with Him forever, it did occur to me that a part of the reason might be so that we can experience things here that we can never experience in Heaven, along with some things that we presume we will experience in Heaven, but may experience here in a different context. A few of the obvious items are evil (seeing evil can help us understand good), pain (experiencing pain, and relief from pain, or observing pain and helping someone in pain will not be possible in Heaven!), achievement of a difficult task, and seeing beauty in nature, art, and music, and from the Christian teaching that God is love, to experience love, and not loving, in a way that will help us appreciate Heaven more when we are there.
So on the whole, I have come to the conclusion that God does exist, that He created this world for me to live in. I also believe from my personal experience, as well as things I have heard from others (including my religious training based on the bible) that God is involved in the world today, has always been involved, and that it doesn’t make any difference whether God is involved by setting things in motion billions of years ago, or tweaking the path of a bullet as it is flying.
And one other major aspect of some of these religious discussions has also occurred to me. I believe that God really does love everyone He has placed on this earth, and that He truly does not place anyone into a situation on this earth in which that soul has no chance to be saved. One follow on point is that God is infinite, which means that God could reveal a distinct part of Himself to each individual on earth, filling all of our finite minds with knowledge of God, and not a single overlapping bit of information in any of those billions of minds, and yet the total fraction of knowledge of God in all human minds combined would be mathematically indistinguishable from 0 % of the total infinite knowledge of God. This isn’t how God has chosen to work; He lets us share knowledge, and work together to try to understand Him, to give us a basis for knowing Him and loving Him. But anyone who claims to know the only way to properly relate to God is either mistaken or lying. God can choose to relate to any one of us however He wants.
To Roae (and all the rest of you), I apologize if I have gone on too long, but I really felt a pull, to try to show a viewpoint that I have come to many years down the road from the time when I was where I sense that you are today. And I am very much at peace with my God at this point in mhy life.