or maybe God create “kinds” with the ability to evolve within the realm of the created order in which they were created in order to survive the environments in which they may have been placed Has mainstream science even considered this as an option? The answer would be no because it cannot allow God in any way, shape or form into the scientific equation.
Why in the world would God, who if He has the capability to create matter and energy out of nothing and who would therefore indeed also have the ability to create a plant or an animal in an instant, choose to create life as we know it via evolution over billions of years? Why would God choose to share allegiance in a creation model that is completely similar to the chance evolutionists model who choose evolution as the necessary pathway to curves away from anything God and anything miracle? And how dare scientists today say that they know that evolution from a soup of bacterium evolved into what we have today by chance. Ludicrous. They are not performing good science, they are pushing against the idea of God, exactly what Paul says that non Christians will do in the book of Romans.
Theistic evolutionists are thereby angering naturalistic evolutionists and they are angering a growing number of Christians who are growing more in love with a God who is so outstanding and so marvelous and so brilliant that the pathways of how His creation came to be are not going to be capable of being figured out with precision this side of heaven. And they are siding with the basic tenants of the Bible for guidance instead of naturalistic science.
I believe theistic evolutionists need to look hard and long at the evidence for evolution as naturalists see it and consider long and hard how the evidence attained is situated and positioned to fit a pre ordained philosophy and belief system that shoves God into a box and puts it away.
And the philosophy that these naturalists believe: Random mutations or survival of the fittest selection leading to things like male and female sexes and colors of fish on the bottom of the sea, and symbiotic relationships between plants and animals and the migration patterns inbuilt into the monarch butterfly and beauty all occurring by CHANCE…for theists to find temptation to borrow patterns established by this worldview before they are willing to borrow from the basic patterns of God creating kinds with the ability to adapt is (I’m sorry) a testimony to simple mindedness and possibly apostacy.
Greg, you do realize that mainstream science shows pretty irrefutable evidence that environments have changed dramatically over time because of climate change and tectonic plate movement. Antarctica was once a tropical rain forest. The animals that were “originally placed” there are not the ones there now. Mainstream science accepts the earth is ancient because that is what multiple converging lines of evidence point to. Your YEC friends are the ones who are constrained in their interpretive options because of their preconceived ideas of what the evidence is “allowed” to say.
He thought it would be a good way to create and it’s his world, so he can do what he wants?
You realize creation happened before Darwin described it? What you are saying doesn’t make any sense. Why would God choose to knit babies together in their mother’s womb in a way that can be described in non-miraculous scientific terms? Why didn’t he choose to send storks from Heaven so no one could say babies just happen when sperm meet egg?
Again, you keep saying this, but it doesn’t make it true. The goal of science is to explain things we observe, not “push against the idea of God” An argument from personal incredulity is not convincing. Where are your facts?
Exactly, so explain to me again who it is I’m trying to “appease” by my beliefs. It looks to me like I’m setting myself up to be judged by the most people possible, so maybe my motivation is not trying to fit in with a group after all.
It is impossible to side with the basic tenants of the Bible for guidance on science because the basic tenants of the Bible are moral and spiritual. No matter how much I love the Bible, I’m not going to be able to “side with it” if I want guidance about why earthquakes happen.
Greg, you are showing how little you understand about evolutionary theory in this paragraph. Natural selection acting on random mutations is not random. The development of symbiotic organisms is actually an argument FOR evolution. We’ve been through the evolution of sexual reproduction before. It is a ridiculous and completely ignorant idea to say that evolution requires males to evolve and then females to evolve separately for sexual reproduction to evolve.
Christian scientists don’t want to “borrow” from your biblical kinds idea precisely because they are not simple-minded and that idea doesn’t hold water. Joel Duff has pages and pages of documentation of where it fails to be coherent, predictive, or remotely possible over at the his Naturalis Historia blog. Until you can point to solid refutations of all those piles of evidence, all your waxing eloquent about how a belief in kinds is just so much more beautiful and God honoring is just talking.
Well, there you have it, @Celticroots, this is the world we live in where most of us fellowship with people who feel as Greg does. Don’t let that discourage you in your convictions about knowing Christ and his truth. I’m not suggesting that you yourself don’t have growing to do --who among us doesn’t? But you can be assured that many of us root ourselves in Biblical Christian conviction and because of that we separate out many of the things that Greg confuses above. Those who think as he does, will insist that they are getting their inspiration from Scriptures alone so that to disagree with them is to disagree with God. They fail to see that they have bundled in their own understandings (the understandings of man --modern man at that) with unquestionable infallibility. Those of us who continue to pore over Scriptures (all of them) have no trouble now seeing that we can accept the Biblical God and all his Words and Works without fear, because all truth is God’s truth.
So don’t fret if you feel mistakenly lumped in with words like these:
Greg is right that a lot of people do push against God as Paul warns, and those people will make use of anything they can (including science) for their agenda too – which does much to explain the reactionary agendas of good people like Greg. They then let too much of that godless agenda become the driver for their own would-be Christian agenda, and thus fall into the same error as those that they claim to oppose. Words like ‘Chance’ (which ultimately is nothing more than a human construct so far as we could philosophically know) are allowed to be appropriated by neo-Atheists who then get to dictate the agenda for all these same creationists. Those of us who reject those kinds of atheistically-sourced fundamentalisms do good to reject the philosophies of Dawkins and his disciples and to root ourselves in God’s living Word, delving back into that true and solid foundation that preceded the sands that so many modern creationists are trying to build on.
Be a fearless pursuer (and finder when God so blesses your labor!) of truth. The world needs a lot more of those right now. But know that our own understandings are fallible – this is not an ode to science as some sort of infallible oracle. So while we can hold fast to our convictions as God enables and teaches us, we yet have to learn to hold our own understandings tentatively --some more than others, but all of them in the end, are subject to revision or even complete reversal. If we don’t learn to do that then we fall into the same error as so many modern creationists of declaring our own understandings infallible.
I am just curious — would you say that people at the time the Bible was written might have interpreted any of its statements differently than we do today? Would there have been any references they would have gotten that we wouldn’t be aware of, or any information about the world that they would not have had but we do? And if so, is there any role that scholarship of ancient Near East people should play in Biblical interpretation?
You are so right! The Bible says God “created” man but it does not describe the process. Anyone with a basic understanding of Anthropology knows that a fossil record does exist, and the evidence that evolution was the process is very strong; Furthermore, I do not believe it was random. When “religious” teaching takes the position that creation was akin to God waving a magic wand, it flies in the face of the evidence God himself has made available to us and I think the reason it matters is evidenced by the number of educated people who run from it.
And yet you answer your very own question. You propose that God would allow Natural Selection and genetic mutations so that a “kind” can adapt to its environment over the course of centuries.
Based on the fossil record, it would appear that several millions of kinds either Failed to so adapt … or you have to conclude that most of the fossils of “kinds” that we find were wiped out in the Flood.
Either way, we have problems of interpretation. Why would God create so many Evolve-able Kinds if they were ultimately not going to survive the first bad winter after the Great Flood?
OR … if you prefer the fossils representing mostly those killed by the Flood… why do we not find large mammal fossils mixed in with all the bones of those killed in the flood? Yes, the Ark contained pairs of mammals… but the Ark clearly didn’t have 100% of all the populations, right? If there were 10,000 rhinos… the ark had 2 or 7 pair at most… and 9,000+ of the rest of the rhinos drowned in the flood. And the same with the elephants, and the giraffes and the grizzlies and so forth.
And yet None of the bulk of these populations are ever found, systematically, in the fossil beds of all the other species that did not survive to the present age?
Frankly, this whole kind of analysis seems to be a bit of a mess…
I believe I said that kinds were created with the ability to adapt. To base anything on a fossil record, one has to make a thousand and one assumptions. A fossil record will typically occur in extreme circumstances. Even naturalistic scientists will tell you that fossils are hard to form so when we have some, we pay close attention to them…yet they ignore the ones like conrads human skull dating 350 million years old! A naturalistic scientist will necessarily go into a direction of interpreting the fossil record towards a Godless proposition and therefore will adjust those thousand and one assumptions towards the Godless model.
For these reasons, I refuse to draw close to the camp that interprets nature that necessarily concludes with molecules to complexity evolution that better explains life without the likes of a Creator God who will sour human propensity for immorality and pride. I really believe that one day we are going to be really surprised how The Bible spoke more truly in all of these regards than some of us want to think today.
I like Sailhammer’s views 1000 times better than the evolution views that disallow the existence of Adam and Eve because people evolved from apes millions of years ago etc.
Name someone here on the BioLogos boards that endorses a Godless model.
I don’t think you can. Why do you continue to repeat your interest in disproving the Godless model here on the BioLogos boards? Who here is preaching in favor of the Godless model?
I do not have all of the answers. I definitely don’t have all of the answers as to what occurred billions of years ago. This is what I do know: A great history professor in college said that human history and he would even mean recent history is never the deliverance of the FACTS but the authors interpretation of the facts. Two recent events can have two completely different accounts…let alone relying on a scientist to interpret with assured language what occurred billions of years ago. Where one set of basic assumptions leads towards one interpretation, the other set leads to a complete different.
Since I don’t have the answers yet I have come to faith in Christ who is a fulfillment of all Scripture, I respect it enough to be closer in line with it and less towards other interpretations by folks who don’t respect it.
If a person is seeking God, I would never thrust my views down that person’s throat. But I could not in good conscious water my views if they asked.
I cannot name one person. You are absolutely right. My point is that theistic evolution find more common ground with the naturalistic models of evolution than it does the miracle of creation as plainly spoken about in the Scriptures. I have never run across one single verse in Scriptures that lead one toward the evolutionary model. And of course the Scriptures are not a science book, but they are about God as Creator and God as creator of Adam and Eve and Jesus being the second and better Adam who, unlike Adam obeyed. If I knew that Adam did not exist, I would be hesitant to believe in the second and better Adam in the second person of the trinity, Jesus Christ.
The more we convince folks to accept these tenants of theistic evolution, the more i believe Christ becomes impotent and insignificant…maybe not to the Biologos staff, but long term perhaps. I believe more than ever this is thin ice.
There is a Cosmic difference between Godless Evolution and any form of Evolution where God is involved.
So I think you should retract your criticism and your illogical statement that Theistic Evolution is more like Godless Evolution than like anything else…
If a verse in the Bible says things like “And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds” and from this I suggest that I revere these words enough to want to take them for what they are worth in the plain rendering of them, then I hope you don’t think badly of me. Then there is the verse “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” If one would try to convince me that this is also a stupid idea because science tells us that God creating that first man and woman is a dumb thought in light of it, then I would be depressed because Jesus is the second Adam. If the first Adam, why would I believe in the second one?
Symbiotic relationships between plants and animals proves evolution? the plant that mimics a female wasp that 100% relies on the male wasp to become fooled and land on it for pollination proves evolution? How did the plant know how to evolve to look like that wasp? How did it survive while molding into the form acceptable to the true wasp? If my assumption is that evolution is true and I work as an educator and a ministry that bolsters this opinion, then don’t you think one will find reason to support an evolutionary model that fits the theory into the scenario, when logically it makes absolutely no sense.
Conrad’s skull was examined by real scientists and deemed a rock sorta shaped like a skull. Although when googled, evidently there is a candy called Conrad’s milk chocolate skulls that looks pretty legit.
Regarding your concern over first vs second Adam, evolution does not necessarily preclude a literal Adam, though I do tend to lean toward archetypal Adam.
I am talking about the practical essence of the types of evolution and not the spiritual sense of it. A naturalistic evolutionist attempts to gather the historical evidence for developing a history novel so to speak that attempts to explain what occurred in the deep deep past. The practical essence of this model is mainly accepted by most theistic evolutionists I encounter accept that theistic evolutionists just paste some spiritual semantics on top of the same model.
So if recent human history can have vastly different historical interpretations in the differing history novels, then in the same way, so will interpretations of the deep past but on a much more exaggerated level. Can you agree with this proposition?
I’m betting @jpm has more in common with atheist doctors than doctor Luke who wrote the Bible when it comes to practicing modern medicine. He probably does not prescribe wine with water for stomach problems like 1 Timothy 5:23. Why should modern scientists have more in common with ancient people and their ideas about how the world was set up than their own contemporaries?
Adam can exist but not be the literal genetic ancestor of all humans. His significance to the gospel message is spiritual not biological.
I don’t ever try to convince anyone to accept the tenants of theistic evolution. I defend them when they are challenged, because I want people to know I have thought through my own beliefs. You don’t need science to follow Jesus. But if you already do accept the tenants of theistic evolution and think that somehow means you can’t believe the Bible or follow Christ, I’m happy to share the good news that you can accept both.
You keep talking about thin ice. People walk away from their faith for all kinds of reasons. Most of the stories I of people I know personally it had to do with deep disappointment with God or with people who supposedly represented God. Some were told they had to choose between things they knew were true scientifically and their faith. I don’t know anyone who walked away from their faith because of theistic evolution. I’ve been on the slippery slope of thin ice for fifteen or so years and I don’t think my faith is any worse for wear because of evolution.
I don’t think badly of you. But I think “plain rendering” is not a valid exegetical strategy. It is the equivalent of saying, “It means what I think it is supposed to mean.”
It’s not dumb to believe that God created the first humans in the spiritual sense. Science doesn’t and can’t speak to that. The first spiritual humans do not necessarily have to coincide with the first biological homo sapiens. There was no “first biological human” for people who accept evolution, because speciation happens in populations. Science can speak to genetic realities and the genetic impossibility that a single couple is the biological parents of all living humanity.
Well, it only “logically makes no sense” when you reject the model out of hand. Inside the model, it makes plenty of sense, and what doesn’t make logical sense is bariminology. I grew up YEC. I walked away because it didn’t make sense and evolution did. I started out with the assumption that evolution was a lie from the devil, but I found that assumption did not hold up in light of so many many facts.
Thank you for the link. It appears the author is somewhat elusive so far as creditials and work, even though this unverified report is Nobel worthy if true. It seems to be on the order of the reports of finding Noah’s ark that surface every few years, and it would be helpful should he submit his findings for peer review.
It is a serious problem to our Christian witness when questionable reports are presented as fact, whether they be little old ladies forwarding emails and Facebook stories, or fabricated scientific reports reported as fact by Christian sites. There is also secular false research published, and it is harshly condemned when discovered, something the Christian community is strangely unwilling to do.
I know there is really no changing of minds on these exchanges, so wish you well, and have a joyous and blessed week. I would only suggest you take care to take Paul’s advice to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:3-7 as will I.
What? Almost nobody is disallowing the existence of Adam and Eve! In fact, I would encourage you to go back and read Genesis again. God creates humans, “male and female,” and then later, he forms Adam out of dust and puts him in the Garden. Where does it even say that Adam was the first human?
Bible readers have speculated about pre-Adam people long before anybody went around talking about being related to apes. Who was Cain afraid of, who did he marry, and what people did he build his city out of?
If a person walks away from the Christian faith because of a scientific perspective not matching a Biblical understanding, then I believe that the foundation from which they find their hope is unbiblical in and of itself. I don’t believe in a God who loves me even though He is so outstanding and above me and beyond my full comprehension because I determined this by scientific means, which if they are shaken, so will my faith. I believe in Him because He did a work in my heart such that I find myself, in view of such a God, less trusting in my feelings and my potentially ill formed perceptions and more trusting in God who declares Himself in the Bible as beyond and better.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. In the meantime, I will be fully applauding and cheering on those churches who grab hold of the idea that God created kinds and He created Adam and Eve and Jesus the 2nd person of our triune God came in the form of a man, the second and better Adam.
And if I were to rely on my rational mind for determining truth, I really cannot wrap my brain around the logic of some type of very simple life form of say a bacteria that exists, say even by God putting it there then evolving into an entirely complex organism by the power of natural forces alone. I realize that theistic evolution suggests that God intervenes somehow…it seems that the way that He does so is in a way of almost overseeing natural forces that He ordained to develop the organism which, to me is the exact same as the prior example which does not make sense to me at all. If the above is in the realm of being true, then I think more need to be aware of the illogical nature of such evolution as a worldview belief system that becomes the pinnacle from which the scientific conclusions are molded then communicated en masse.
All people carry baggage of preconceived notions that are guided by how smart they are or how they were educated or if they carry wounds…not to mention that our brains and hearts are stained with an every present rebellion to God which is the reason for the gospel. I am loaded with tendency for overly rationalistic thinking and tendency for self-reliance…not to mention I am indeed still imperfect and awaiting full redemption of my body and soul one day. The soil of my heart had to be tilled for these propensities to be stilled and repented of for the gospel seed to grow and for this, I stand more in line with the prophets and apostles who took on the mainstream religious crowds of their time as well as the culture in which they were placed…and many of whom were put to death for speaking up. And I will stand with them before I will stand more in line with even the base tenants of the secular science community who laughs and mocks Christianity and Christ. I am not saying that biologos is that. But you are defending the tenants of their ideology more than the theme threaded through the entire Bible that God created. as proclaimed by God’s prophets and apostles.