What evidence for example do you believe shows humans in the same geological layers as dinosaurs from let’s say the Cretaceous since I already used T. rex?
None. The evidence is from historical accounts. There is also the evidence of preserved soft tissues, DNA, blood products, etc. in dinosaur fossils that belie the claim of millions of years.
There are historical accounts of giant titans, monsters made of water and fire, and tons of ghost stories , Bigfoot stories and fairy stories as well though.
Did you know one of the scientists, if not the main scientist and first one to find soft tissue has contributed here? You can read links also.
A forum also.
She’s also a Christian who does not seem to follow a literalist account and she’s the one who found that soft tissue.
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When you declare a non-evidence based story or a figure of speech to be ‘the literal, absolute, revealed truth’, you leave reality, including that of God, behind. You’re lost. In a wilderness of… lies. And think you’re found.
Hi Emily,
I think you have received all the help you need, but in case you need one more voice, I’d be happy to help out.
[quote=“cewoldt, post:19, topic:44459”]
they were buried during the flood
Sorry to interupt here but wasnt the flood a local event in the near middle east? I dont think science supports a local flood
Thanks for letting us know more of where you’re coming from, @Emily_Decker !
Were you surprised that the three of us who accept evolution said the same thing? Nobody claimed that Scripture argues for evolution. It’s more a question of whether evolution is one of the many natural processes the Bible doesn’t reveal, but creation does. Another one that I find interesting is earthquakes. The Bible never speaks of any other cause for an earthquake than God – there’s no such thing as a natural earthquake! But I don’t see that ruling out things like plate tectonics that describe how earthquakes come about.
I agree with this. I don’t think we should distort the story to fit how we think it should look based on other things, such as science.
In Genesis 1, looking closely at how the story is told led me to not press it to be eyewitness reporting. The explicit way each creation day is followed by evening to morning when nothing happens – in other words, God takes the nights off – showed how God’s work is portrayed in the template of a human work week. But since God does work nights too, this also guarded against taking the picture too literally. (As do other depictions of creation in Job and the Psalms that make no use of the work week template.)
The exquisite structure in the days – forming the luminous high heavens, sea and sky, and dry land followed by filling the high heavens, sea and sky, and dry land with creatures – makes sense of why everything is on the day it is. Plants are just described like set dressing on the third day while the sun and moon are personified as rulers on the fourth day. It’s natural to think that living plants should come later than lifeless celestial objects, but in the perspective of the account, the luminaries are creatures while plants are not. A close reading that doesn’t try to force modern science into the text helps us see things that would be obvious in other times and places but not in our own (and perhaps shows that Genesis 1 does place angels within God’s creation – on the fourth day).
Would you agree that both the Bible and creation are from God, and both understanding the Bible and understanding creation are human endeavors? If so, the Bible and creation are two sources of truth. Our grasp of both is flawed and limited, so we can’t assume that any problem will always be due to the science. In some ways, reading the Bible introduces more ways for our human limits to lead us astray. With a rock, we don’t have to ask if it’s speaking metaphorically! 
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@cewoldt and @SkovandOfMitaze and @Klax and @NickolaosPappas …
Let’s not bog down Emily’s thread with your own exchanges and refutations of each other (unless Emily wants that to continue here … in which case … it’s her thread), but short of getting her blessing on that, feel free to start new threads of your own to make your cases against each other, or add to already existing threads on those topics. Meanwhile, I think the only standing request from Emily we have so far here is to state your own position (and maybe some of your reasons for holding it), and then leave it at that.
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I understand. My response was directed specifically at her to help her explain how does the science better explain genesis 2,3 & 9 since her stance is the Bible is more scientifically accurate which I was initially including in my first response but split it in half and was waiting to see what her response was to better know how to shape my response.
Nonetheless, other than a follow up that is part of my first first response showcasing why it’s not necessary to have a explicit verse to mention something when the genre is wrote differently from nonfiction. But that’s something I’ll do later. I’ll ignore everyone else’s questions in this thread through.
That’s all I need for my report! I don’t mind if people keep discussing the thread on here, it’s actually been kind of fun to read! Thank you all again, I have more than enough for the assignment! Best wishes to you all!
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Welcome, @Emily_Decker. Thank you for the thread, which has started a good train of thought. @Marshall, that is very well put! I agree that the very structure of Genesis implies it was intended to convey not historical specifics, but theological ones. @DOL Dr Lamoureux’ book, “The Bible and Ancient Science,” describes this well in the section on the “Message Incident Principle,” page 102 on.
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Sorry I’m late to the discussion; time held me prisoner for a bit but let me try to add something I pray will be helpful.
- I’m a little surprised that people don’t see the obvious parallels between the scriptures and science. Let me outline them:
Both science and the scriptures hold that in the beginning the earth was lifeless; both hold that life began in the waters and after moved to land; both hold that there were great creatures in the waters; for the scriptures humanity is the crown of creation and for science humanity is the high point of evolution.
That’s some very broad agreement. As Francis Collins has suggested in his Language of God the problem of interpreting the 7 day creation of the scriptures versus the billions of years posed by science can start to be unraveled if we remember that in the first day there was no sun or earth. How could that day be measured by the rotation of the earth on it’s axis around the sun?
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I’m going to simply say that I don’t see salvation as being impacted by whatever transitional forms preceded humanity.
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The mystery of Adam & Eve really opens profound questions that I’m going to just touch on but if we think that you will never find the Tree of Knowledge with a cherubim guarding it on earth you have the clue you need to understand that what took place in the Garden of Eden did not take place on earth.
send me your email and I’ll forward you an essay that is very Biblical and from a very different perspective. garrytucker@comcast.net
I know this is a late addition to the thread, but I thought I would note that this question is similar to “what happens to babies or toddlers that die? Do they have access to the plan of salvation?”
The short answer is that we don’t know about babies or Neanderthals or others.
The better answer is that the judge of all the world will judge righteously.
As Abraham said in Genesis 18:
“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”
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1. What scripture could you present that backs up evolutionary creation (God creating through the use of evolution as a tool)?
I describe myself as an evolutionary creationist, the “evolutionary” part being derived scientifically from nature and the “creationist” part being derived theologically from scripture. In other words, my creationist beliefs represent biblical doctrine so scriptures are relevant, but my evolutionary beliefs are the product of science; the theory of evolution is not an inference from scriptures, so pointing to scriptures would be improper.
To me, an evolutionary creationist is someone who seeks to understand the science of evolution from within a gospel-centered world-view. Others will have a different perspective. This one is mine. On this biblical world-view, there is a crucial difference between “natural history” and “redemptive history.” Natural history is the stage upon which the drama of redemptive history unfolds, and it is redemptive history which reveals the meaning and purpose of natural history, all things pointing to Jesus Christ for the glory of God. In other words, nearly 14 billion years of natural history had taken place by the time we reach the events of Genesis, marking the dawn of redemptive history roughly six thousand years ago when God entered into a covenant relationship with mankind through Adam as our federal head. I would point to science for the billions of years of natural history, and to scriptures for the thousands of years of redemptive history.
2. What sort of implications would evolutionary creation have on salvation? As far as, like, if God used evolution to create, especially humans, then what would’ve happened to the transitional forms before humans were fully-formed? Could they have been part of the plan of salvation?
On this view, the plan of salvation would have encompassed Adam and his contemporaries as they existed six thousand years ago. It would not have included anyone who had lived and died prior to that time because there was no covenant relationship between God and man until Adam and the garden. The plan of salvation presupposes that covenant relationship, with Adam pre-figuring the Christ to come.
In the context of redemptive history, those who are “in Adam” belong to the old humanity that experiences condemnation and death, while those “in Christ” belong to the new humanity that experiences salvation and life. Whatever can be learned about those who lived and died prior to Adam will not be found in sacred scriptures, which constrains itself to the narrative threads of redemptive history. That which is not connected to redemptive history and the people of God is not included. (Ever notice how Scripture doesn’t mention Gentile nations apart from their connection with the people of God? For example, not a single word about Japanese people exists anywhere in the Bible; it is not a coincidence that they also have no interaction with the people of God throughout canonical revelation.)
3. If evolutionary creation is correct, was there a historical Adam and Eve as the Bible says, or are we to take everything about Adam figuratively?
Yes, on this view Adam and Eve were real people in history, living roughly six thousand years ago. (However, it’s unlikely that those were their names, for they are Hebrew words and that language did not exist until somewhere in the middle of the second millennium BC.)
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