And yet Christians talk quite well about cars, planes and number of other things not mentioned in the Bible. Why single out “evolution” for prohibition?
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Thanks for your answer. If you haven’t looked yet, you might consider, exploring the Common Questions section of Biologos’s website (Common Questions on Science and Biblical Faith - BioLogos) where you can find many articles that address some of the concerns you have expressed. Personally, I find a well-organized article more helpful than most discussion groups, because the discussion can quickly fragment into many different areas, and each participant focuses on a different splinter, rather than looking at a conhesive whole. Biologos also has excellent podcasts (see: Language of God) and a Youtube channel with many, many helpful videos. Some of the materials directly address your stated questions, for example about a literal Adam and Eve. I recommend you put your main energies into these resources, rather than the fora.
I am not a scientist (and I don’t play one on TV). But I find the issue of evolution and age of the earth important, because some small groups make claims about what I can/may and cannot/mayn’t believe with respect to those things, AND because of the hermeneutics they insist on. For me the hermeneutics are actually a bigger deal in this matter than the science, which I find interesting, but also overwhelming (there are many, many branches, all with their separate bodies of technical knowledge). Often, when we are confronted with statements about Adam and Eve, for example, the conflict really lies in assumptions about how we handle the text of the Bible, and whether we can actuallly read those texts without bringing our assumptions to them.
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Find a copy of “Finding Darwin’s God” by Kenneth Miller, a Biology professor at Brown University. Dr. Miller is a practicing Roman Catholic. He takes on the militant atheists and Christians that believe in intelligent design and all that. It is a very good book with tons of footnotes. It does a good job showing how there are answers to arguments based on “irreducible complexity” centered on the eye, blood clotting and so on. Read it!
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Evolution is a Scientific FACT.
However that does not change the Truth of Scriptures in the slightest. God created the First Humans with Adam and Eve, they have evolved ever since. God created the first Apes, similar to that of Humans, BUT ARE NOT, they too have evolved ever since.
Here is a True Statement:
Evolution within any given species is a Scientific FACT. People who try to use that FACT to try to explain how all life got on this planet are wrong in their beliefs.
Humans create species of humans.
Cats create species of cats.
Dogs create species of dogs.
Every species can evolve within its own species.
Evolution within any given species can be scientifically proven.
The problem is, when people try to use that FACT as a means to try to explain how all life Got on this planet. That is when the error in thinking begins.
No species has ever created a new, different species, than of itself.
For example. Scientist have extensively experimented with the Fruit fly. altering genes, cross breeding, you name it, they tried it, trying to come up with a NEW species that is NOT a fruit fly. They utterly failed. They are not able to cause anything but fruit flies. They can mutate a thousand genes in that fruit fly and it still ALWAYS produces a type of Fruit fly. NO exceptions. This is because of God’s word, that specifically said “After their kind”
This generation needs to understand the Power of God, If God wanted to create a NEW SPECIES, He merely needs to speak it into existence. He does not need to evolve anything to create it. That is the Power of God.
God could create a full grown Tree (rings and all) by merely speaking it into existence. A Tree that is a second old, but in every way possible appears to be a thousand years old. A Scientist comes along the next day, and cuts down that Tree that is a DAY old, and that Scientist with his methods of aging trees, counts the Rings, and says “This Tree is for a FACT a Thousand One Hundred and Twenty Seven Years old” he knows nothing at all, only thinks he does because of the evidence that he sees with his mortal eyes.
Believe the Word of God and what it teaches, not what Scientist proclaim to think they know.
Those are your FACTs, your Truths, your True Statements. How did you come by them? What happened to you?
And which human, cat, dog species create which species of their ‘kind’? Presumably all of them. There are multiple of each.
Will the tree rings themselves have the appearance of age? Will they reflect 1127 years of experience that didn’t happen? Any scientist who came across a tree with rings that don’t reflect the weather and the climate of the previous 1127 years should get extremely suspicious. Also the instant tree would have had no environmental impact. A scientist would notice that. It would have no insect fauna, no microbes, no mycelium. It would have had no effect on the soil and the larger ecology, on the water table. No squirrels. There are many tree species that can live that long as individuals and not just as clones. Even Great Basin bristlecones of that young age would each have an enormous environmental impact with a millennium of pine needles for a hundred meters and going a metre deep at the centre.
So God would have to lie upon lie upon lie to hide His traces from a scientist.
What’s your Gish Gallop of yeah buts to that?
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Let’s take Chesapecten as an example: in the lowermost part of the Yorktown Formation, one can find C. jeffersonius, an inflated shell with about 10-14 widely spaced, rounded ribs (based on the ones I have sitting around). In the lower-middle part of the same formation, one finds C. septenarius, with about 5-12 widely spaced, squarer ribs and low-ribcount type C. madisonius with 12-16 lower rounded ribs. In the uppermost part of the Yorktown formation, one only finds high-ribcount type C. madisonius with 20-30 lower rounded ribs.
If one considers these to have been gradually deposited (as pretty much anyone studying them does), then that suggests a transition from one species to another. Whether one agrees with the time period suggested is a different matter, and an issue on which I am slightly less familiar (would have to check which dating method was used).
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Yeahbut that proves DD’s point. A clam’s a clam right?
Do you really think that God has created us for an existence like the Matrix movie, where everything that we perceive is not factual?
What I see in the early chapters of Genesis is that God created humanity to join His work by stewarding His creation and to join His rest by worshipping and fellowshipping with Him. How would false evidence of tree rings be consistent with the mission and purpose God has given us?
For that matter, there is much evidence in biology and paleontology of humanity sharing common descent with the rest of the life that God created. Here’s a good article that summarizes a tiny portion of that evidence:
Why would God fabricate evidence of a history that did not occur?
Respectfully,
Chris Falter
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True, but those are what I’m familiar with.
As a better option for this, one could look at rostroconchs, bivalves, and scaphopods. I’m not an expert on Paleozoic mollusks, though.
Yeahbut you’re an ‘expert’ so what do you know huh? You’ve been brainwashed in logic, evidence based reasoning.
One argument I constantly hear, that is purely a conspiracy theory, is that scientists are working together worldwide in order to deceive mankind in order to promote atheism.
But where is just one of many reasons why that’s not true. We see them called out routinely. Such as this case .
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/top-spider-biologists-research-under-fire-67083/amp
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Once upon a time, not only did I believe this, but I used to promote this position too! The reality is though that so many people would need to be involved in the conspiracy (scientists, employers, teachers, publishers, media companies, etc.) that it would be impossible to keep it secret.
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Ah, but the god of this world is a lying virtual demiurge and has blinded them all. Those who have eyes to hear can smell this.
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I was having a discussion with someone about this a while back on fb and when i brought up how unlikely it is that tens of millions of people were all in on it they responded it’s not hard to believe once you realize they are all demonically possessed. Then they shared videos of stuttering or pauses all edited together of dozens of scientists as evidence that their true self was trying to break free lol.
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But who says the demons are wrong?!
Does he do a good job of proposing theism in nature? Sufficient to overcome the absence of it in science?
I’ll let him speak for himself. The book is available in paper. I am reading portions of it for the fourth or fifth time. I’ve given this book to several people.
For what it’s worth, I have an M.Div from Fuller Theological Seminary. I am a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy. The Nicene Creed states that God is the “maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things, visible and invisible.” Apart from the filioque addition by Rome, this is the creed that Dr. Miller and I believe is true. I let the scientists try to figure out the details and relationships of things.
Read the book.
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No thanks. It doesn’t say anything I don’t already know.