Well, I dunno who else could do that! All miracles are against nature! Unnatural.
Yes. I think He used evolution because that is what His creation tells us He used. Nature tells us the how and the Bible tells us the why. YEC and OEC oppose evolution, IMHO, because it conflicts with their theology.
One can hold that all creation is “miraculous” in that it is created and sustained by God, and there is no real difference in a miracle that derives from what we know as the laws of nature, and on that we do not understand as being consistent with natural law. We see this often in that people are healed by medicine or the natural healing properties of the body we are genetically born with, but it is still from God. Perhaps this gets a bit off subject from the original post, though interrelated, so think if you want to pursue this line, perhaps should branch it off into a new thread.
It has helped me to try to look at humanity and sin nature and the calling to be image bearers on a more corporate level. Humanity evolved as a population, human culture and language developed in community and I believe God has chosen humans as a group to be his representatives on earth. At some point in history, God chose to reveal himself to humanity and give them a special calling, but they rejected that relationship and rebelled against that calling. I don’t think “sin” or a “sinful nature” is something that exists in each individual’s biology or genes or that it is a result of evolution. It’s a result of what corporate humanity has freely done with their moral and spiritual capacities. I think our corporate identity is fallen and our communities raise babies into sin, but God offers each individual person a chance to switch community identity from fallen humanity to whole and redeemed humanity in Christ. And through that, indwelled by the Holy Spirit, we each as individuals are offered the power to reject and overcome and be healed from the aspects of fallen humanity that have been handed down to us through our culture and community and follow the truly human way of Christ instead.
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Thanks for your answer! And am I understanding you correctly that you don’t know or can’t speculate on why God chose evolution to create humans? But that He could have created them ex nihilo if He wanted to?
Ah okay gotcha! I think I must have misunderstood what you meant earlier. But yes, that does make a lot of sense than God creating a sin nature in us. Although from my understanding most Christians, including OEC such as myself wouldn’t ever say God created our sin nature but - as you said - it’s a consequence of willful disobedience and misusing our free will and turning away from a relationship with Him. I’m kinda on the fence with us having a sin nature but my understanding is most believers don’t think God created it in us.
I wonder if it doesn’t have to do with something about evidence for his existence. Believing in God involves choice, but not a blind or blindfolded choice without any evidence. If he created us ex nihilo, I expect there would be some kind of evidence, or lack of, that would point to that.
He wants us to love and trust him for his own sake, not because we have to. Dives (the rich man) and Lazarus come to mind…
‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’
Luke 16:31
As does a little bit involving Kierkegaard:
Hi Dale thanks for your answer. I get where you’re coming from, but don’t theistic evolutionists also believe that God did reveal Himself to Adam/Eve (whether a literal Adam and Eve or some group of modern humans)? From my understanding, even from an TE perspective, there was a revelation of God shown to mankind and then a subsequent “Fall” from grace due to disobedience, right? So, doesn’t that mean that God would still have kind of been like “I’m here!” to these modern humans?
What I mean to say is, doesn’t it seem quite unlikely that the reason that God would have not used creation ex nihilo because it allowed people to reject Him, when His purpose towards us is also includes Him revealing Himself? Even the heavens declare His glory and our existence is full of evidence for a Creator even under the perspective of an evolved Creation. Also, as both the OT and NT prove, even if God comes down to do miracles (e.g. OT miracles, Jesus literally coming from heaven to us as a human), people still find ways to argue around it and reject Him. Sorry, I hope I’m not coming across as dismissive, but those are just my two cents.
However, do you think God could have created humans in His image without evolution (e.g. ex nihilo, or “transforming” dust as some YEC/OEC believe)? Or do you think our existence makes evolution necessary? And if yes, how does this fit with God being able to form perfectly whole humans in the resurrection without evolution?
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I don’t know how or when we became morally responsible modern humans, but I just know for sure that we are! ; - ) Your question also involves a hypothetical that I’m not sure really needs to be addressed since we also know for sure that he did use evolution to create us.
I was an OEC for several decades (I’m in my early to mid geezerhood now ; - ) and endorsed Intelligent Design and the idea of irreducible complexity. But then I learned about neutral drift and the neutral theory of evolution, that they can produce complexity and that ID is cannot be scientifically demonstrated. Interestingly (to me anyway ; - ) and in the same timeframe, I had just had a graphic demonstration that God is sovereign over the timing and placing of mutations in DNA, detailed in my nephrectomy account.
No one can know why God chose evolution. Speculation would be a waste of time although it might generate an interesting discussion. To know why would require knowing the mind of God which is beyond our understanding. And given there are few things that God cannot do of course He could have created them ex nihilo.
‘Yes’ to the former question and ‘No’ to the latter. That is asking if God had to use evolution, and placing a limit on his choice of method. I don’t see a reason why he had to, but I did give a reason above as to maybe why he did.
We know that Jesus’ miraculously resurrected body was different than his mortal one, and it did not take evolution. Similarly with ours, I expect. As an aside, we know that there are more than our four spacetime dimensions, and additional ones incorporated into Jesus’ resurrected body may explain some of its unusual properties as demonstrated to his disciples.
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I believe that free will is reason God created the whole physical material plane, because the first step to free will is some basis of action independent of God’s will and that is what natural law accomplishes. The next step is freedom from natural law which is accomplished by self-organizing phenomenon and quantum physics.
To put it another way… evolution is test and proof that cooperation is the most successful survival strategy. It is when God saw this that He said “it is good.” In mankind this strategy opened up to limitless potential, going from the chemical learning process of evolution to the millions of times faster learning process of the human mind, so God could communicate with us and adopt us as His children… “very good.”
The ultimate objective is children of a God who is infinite spirit with no end to what He has to give and no end to what we can learn and receive from Him – the makings for an eternal parent-child relationship – the essence of eternal life. The physical world is but a womb for our spirit to grow from the free will choices we make. By participating in our own creation we are more than just what God has made us to be – beings other than Him who can return His love.
The need for resurrection comes from our enslavement to the self-destructive habits of sin which is destructive of our free will and our ability to receive anything from God. But according to Paul in 1 Cor 15 it is a bodily resurrection to a spiritual body not a physical/natural body.
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I see it as fundamental to the thread Phil, but that’s me. If God is the miraculous, unnatural, supernatural ground of being, natural being behaves completely perfectly autonomously as if He weren’t.
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If He offered me that relationship I’d take it. Who wouldn’t?
Just to add on to what I said, I found these two articles on Biologos that mention what I was talking about.
https://biologos.org/common-questions/is-animal-suffering-part-of-gods-good-creation
Furthermore, it may be that a long evolutionary process is the only way to bring about some characteristics God desired for creatures. For example, we see hints and precursors of the moral responsibility humans have in other animals. Perhaps placing organisms in challenging environments is how these abilities developed, just like the speed and grace of the gazelle came from generations of outrunning the lion.
One of those greater goods might be what has already been suggested: that God delights in the process of transformation itself. But few people would think that is enough to justify the eons of animal pain and suffering. To this, though, we might add an “only way” theodicy. Perhaps the evolutionary struggle is the only way to develop moral beings like us. I’d suggest that moral maturity is a quality that can be developed only by making moral decisions. God can no more create morally mature creatures than he could create free persons who are incapable of sin. So to achieve moral maturity, agents must be involved in their own moral formation by making decisions with moral implications. But in order to have genuine moral decisions, there must be a challenging environment in which beings are subjected to the kinds of natural evils that force difficult decisions. When faced with such situations, will creatures opt for their own selfish preservation over doing what is right and good?
This “only way” argument for evolution actually makes a lot of sense to me which is why I posited the question above.
Do any people on this forum hold to this “only way” understanding of the natural world/evolution? If so, my question remains the same. It seems strange to say evolution was the “only way” God could create moral agents, but then also say that He can in an instant resurrect and create us anew after death (assuming we will also be free agents with the ability to make moral decisions).
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That the ends are not independent of the means is the difference between reality and a dream. God could have made this a dream world, but that is no great accomplishment. Any kid on the block has omnipotence in his own dreams.
You can have children in your dreams, but are they not different from children in reality? Dreams have no freedom of existence or freedom of will. Creating things any way you want only applies to a dream world. It is the logical coherence of a system of laws and rules which make reality different from a dream world.
Design is the difference between a living organism and a machine. The DNA of living organisms is the accumulation of information acquired by learning. Thus they are alive rather than machines. If you want a means to an end then life serves no useful purpose because machines do things so much more efficiently doing exactly what you want them to do. But if you want a relationship then machines are a bit pointless – you might as well stick to pet rocks. For a real relationship then you want one with those who have their own life and make their own decisions – who not only do as they choose but are as they choose – and not just what you made them to be. Evolution is the process of self-creation. Evolution is life itself.
Yes God could have limited himself to simply designing machines and make a storybook computer game world with npcs. Lots of people have fun with such things. What about you? Do want an npc for a child in a computer game world?
If you want reality rather than a dream world then the results are not independent of the means. Yes God could have created a dream world or a computer game with npcs He designed. But I don’t think that is what God wanted.
Yes. I don’t think we are characters in a book, dream, or computer game. I think our experience of consciousness is evidence of this, because I don’t think characters in a book, dream, or computer game world are conscious beings.
The only way does not apply to the vast number of human beings, if not virtually all, who have only rudimentary, incomplete, nominal, unstretched, common, normal, frail, limited moral maturity. Enough to get by.
All we have to do to transcend is exist. We cannot be created transcendent by fiat. The only way is to exist as a suffering creature.
This is usually directed at YECs, but it covers a couple of the ‘why’ questions:
Thanks for your answer. I can’t say that I fully agree, but I do totally get what you’re saying. That in a way, our past is essential to distinguishing between what you call a “dream world” and a world with rules, physics, laws etc. I totally agree that God wanted us to be created to be freely deciding and independent of Him. I’m just not sure if I agree that evolution is absolutely necessary for this.
What do you make of the resurrection then? If a being requires to be evolved to be freely deciding and a morally able being, wouldn’t we need to be made like this in our resurrection as well? I totally understand that our resurrection will transform us. But we will still be free-willed beings with an independence from God (just that we won’t choose to sin anymore). Wouldn’t us dying and then God resurrecting us (i.e. not using evolution to create the bodies/minds of our resurrected bodies) mean that evolution is not always necessary to make a human in God’s image? Couldn’t God have just done what He will do in the resurrection (i.e. fashion a new body for us, whether it’s from nothing, spiritual or using available atoms/physical materials depending on whether you believe the new Creation is physical or not)? What makes evolution necessary now but not in the resurrection? I hope my questions make sense haha
Thanks. I agree with what you wrote, in that it was an unfinished Creation which we were welcomed to be a part of, enhancing God’s kingdom.
However, that doesn’t really answer my question or why evolution (as claimed by some theistic evolutionists) was necessary to create humans in His image (neurologically/biologically, I suppose) but then in the resurrection, evolution is not involved but God just kind of “poofs” our new bodies into existence