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Evolution and Its Implications for a Christian worldview


IslandRose

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Guest shiloh357
How is it intellectually dishonest to deal with concepts in that manner? They have chopped parts out of the ToE, because the ToE as it stands is totally contrary to a personal God.
It is intellectually dishonest because they are not
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Guest shiloh357
TE'ers are in error. But so are we. And we don't have the right to determine which nature of God we can be wrong about, and not lose salvation, whilst maintaining that what TE'ers are wrong about, is enough to render them 'inauthentic'.
None of us has perfect theology, but there is a difference between having imperfect theology and rejecting the testimony of Scripture and challenging God’s integrity in the process. TE’ers’ beliefs generally fall outisde the boundaries of merely having imperfect theology. There are errors that can and will corrected over time with continued study in Scripture. Most of us do not believe today exactly the same way we believed ten years ago. We have had to learn and unlearn things and adjust to the new illumination of truth of Scripture to our lives. TE’ers reject revealed truth in Scriptures and that places their errors on a totally different scale. So yeah, it is quite easy to see that what TE’ers believe is enough to demonstrate that their profession of faith is not authentic, as it does not reflect the attitudes and marks of a true believer.

The bible itself mandates what is and what isn't essential areas of doctrine. We don't make that choice, it is dictated to us.
Yes, and we are dealing with that area of doctrine here. We are dealing with the origin, authority and inerrancy of Scripture. The Creation account is not some peripheral issue like the rapture or which version of the Bible to use. It is the first and most primary revelation of God and all aspects of His nature including His redemptive attributes are linked to who He is as Creator. To relegate the story of Creation to myth or allegory is to remove His authority as Creator. It is His authority as Creator, that provides the basis for His authority over what He has created as Judge, Law Giver, and Redeemer. Evolution seeks to usurp that authority base.

The central issues we get from proper soteriology are an understanding of salvation by faith alone in the atoning work of Christ on the cross, who came to earth as fully man and fully God, the Son of God, bodily, died and rose again bodily three days later, of the need for redemption (sin), the consequence of sin (death), and the gift of God (eternal life). Stepping outside of this bound is going beyond what proper soteriology should lead us to.
Everything you mention there is rooted in a literal understanding of the Creation story in Genesis. If you remove that aspect of the Creation story, you directly strike at the foundation of soteriology. Soteriology begins in Genesis. Genesis is the seed bed for all of the theology of the rest of Scripture. Salvation has its origin in both the creation of man and the fall of man. So to pretend that one can separate or compartmentalize their beliefs in a way that what one believes about origins does not touch on proper Soteriology is simply bad theology in and of its self.

I know you don't agree with me here, but they do not reject Scripture. They assign improper literary type to it. This is wrong but it isn't rejection.
Yeah, they do reject it. When they subjectively reject the intent of the author, they are claiming the story is not to be believed as written. By assigning “allegory” to it, they are free to make of the story what they wish and to reject it as a concrete, physical history of earth. They are rejecting what it teaches us in favor of an alternate explanation. They realize that the biblical account and Evolution are in complete, diametric opposition to one another. Even unbelivers can see that. So one has to make a choice: Evolution or the Bible?

I'm going to have to ask you what you believe are the minimal, essential elements of salvation. Because in essence, it is about beliefs about Jesus, not about the bible
How you approach the Bibile will definitely affect your ability to place faith in Christ and it will affect how you view Christ. If you view the Bible as a book of myths and stories that may or may not be true, the role of Christ in your life will be effected. I have noted that those who approach the Bible with a liberal bent tend to reject Jesus as the ONLY way of salvation. They are not even convinced that Jesus said everything the Bible attributes to Him. So what you believe abuot the Bible will affect your person soteriology.

Ahh.. I am not so sure I agree here. There is far more to God than just His role as Creator.
Yes, but everything about God begins with His role as Creator. They are layered on top of that. When God’s role as Creator is removed, it does immense violence to everything else that the Bible reveals about God.

There are many ways in which TE's and other Christians can join together an agree upon characteristics of God. The God they have is the God of the bible, but poorly understood and sometimes erroneously understood. But He is their God nonetheless.

The “god” of the TE’ers is sadistic. He creates imperfect and flawed creatures and then devises a cruel process to destroy those that are unfit for his creation. The God of the Bible does not operate in such a maniacal manner.

Shiloh, 'by their fruit they will be known', correct? Why is it that I can see genuine fruit in the lives of some who are TE'ers? They still appear to have a dynamic, transforming, regenerating experience with Christ. I don't see that you can assume anything about their salvation based only on a narrow view at their beliefs. To claim that none of them have a genuine experience with God is to be totally ignorant of the many TE'ers out there who are seen by their fruit to be following Him in obedience and love.

I guess you assume that my only contact with them is on this board. I have worked and lived around them and have seen their lives. Two of them are homosexuals, others enjoy going to bars and have girl friends they sleep with on a regular basis, but I am still expected to accept them as Christians. They all assert vigorously that they are Christians and will fight tooth and nail to be received as such. They don’t recognize God as revealed in Genesis and it is reflected in their indifference to God’s moral laws and the reality that they will be judged. Oh, but they have a “get out of jail free” card. They feel they are covered because they “believe” the right things about Jesus. They don’t see their actions as “sins.’ They don’t recognize the Bible’s authority to define sin, much less having any authority to dictate to them how to live. They see the Bible as a book with a lot of expendable information.

I agree that there is a package of theology that comes with TE, but not that it strikes at the heart of the Christian faith.

You are mistaken. All of the claims of the Christian faith are rooted in historical and geographic truth. All of the converging lines of evidence are found in real settings, events and/or eye-witnesses. They deny this reality by taking parts of the Bible that are meant to be understood as literal events and either denying the events happened or claiming that they are an exaggeration of real events.

I

still firmly believe you are overstating the impact of this erroneous belief.
I have not said anything about erroneous belief. If it were simply a matte of erroneous belief, we would not be having this debate. I am talking about the impact of rejecting biblical truth and challenging God to the point of defaming His character through challenging His integrity which is tantamount to calling Him a liar. This is TE business is far, far more dangerous than you are apparently prepared to accept. Edited by shiloh357
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Winning the battle, but losing the war

Your refutation of my most recent post(s) was 7 pages in Word, so I have taken some time to respond. In prayer, I am concerned, as I have been from the beginning of this debate, not to win the battle but lose the war. I love the Bible and believe it to be the Word of God. I firmly believe I am right, that TE does not imply inauthentic faith, and I'd like to

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Continued from previous post

More of the same.

What I am saying is that when one rejects the testimony of creation in Genesis 1, and adopts Evolution as the correct understanding of origins, that is not the mark of a true believer AND that view is accompanied by an entire body of theological beleifs that undercut the integrity of Scripture.

And my argument is that you are setting up a false dichotomy. It seems to be you underpin belief in TE on a rejection of clear biblical teaching. While we know this to be true, they do not intentionally set out to

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Guest shiloh357
Evolution is not customisable, since when?

Back in the time when the Genesis creation accounts were first given, we have creation accounts being used by false religions as a vehicle to communicate information about their false god/s. Thus when the Hebrews received the Creation account we have in Gen 1-3, they would not have been ignorant of this kind of literary genre.

However, they would have recognised the biblical creation account as differing significantly from the creation accounts of the false religions. There would have been some overlaps, but the Genesis Creation account presents a monotheistic God who is both Creator and Lord over the sky, earth and sea, in stark comparison to the polytheistic god/s of the earth sky and sea.

This is awkward for your position, because the creation account would appear at first glance to be a 'correction' of previously errant creation accounts. If this is the case, how can you criticize TE's for taking an existing theory (atheistic, and incorrect) and presenting it in a way they believe reflects the work of the God of the bible?

You are comparing two dissimilar things. First of all there were different creation stories extant in other nations in other parts of the world. The Creation account in Genesis is just one of many ancient creation accounts. The creation account in Genesis is not based on those accounts. When one examines the cultural milieu of the other accounts significant differences become evident. For example, many creation accounts are linked to the reign of a particular king. In the ancient world, the kings of pagan cultures had to link their reign with a particular god and kings were often seen as son of the gods or a god. Having one's reign tied to the creation of the world was a powerful means of hopefully thwarting off challenges to your rule.

The Creation account in Genesis is not a reworking or customized version of previous creation stories from other parts of the world.

The difference is that there is only ONE theory of Evolution. Any changes in that theory have to be demonstrated to be scientifically necessary and peer-reviewed. It is not something about which you can just arbitrarily decide which parts you will accept or not. It simply doesn't work that way, any more than it would work that way with Scripture. TE's are making a scientific claim and want to circumvent the scientific process. In doing so they are trying to force evolution to agree with the Bible. If Evolution were truly reflective of the work of God, no such adjustments would be necessary.

Evolution as understood by Darwin is no longer accepted by anyone, that theory has changed over time as more so-called evidence has come to light. The theory itself is a fluid, it is becoming much more set now, but it is by no means static.

I really see no rational basis for asserting that evolutionary theory must be either adopted by TE's as it is, or discarded. It sets up a false dichotomy, a straw man, because atheistic evolution is so easily refuted by the Word.

Right. The theory is fluid but the changes in the theory that have occurred are not arbitrary nor motivated by a personal agenda to force evolution to fit a different worldview. Those changes have to be demonstrated in the lab and still must be peer-reviewed before being accepted by the scientific community.

There IS a very rational reason for why they MUST accept Evolution as is. Their primary claim is that evolution is reconcilable with Scripture. Their claim is that God used evolution to accomplish what we see today. The claim to be able to reconcile Evolution with the Bible requires them to reconcile the theory as is. If they change the theory and discard parts of it that don't fit the Bible, they are not reconciling anything. They are simply taking out the parts that make the theory irreconcilable and now they have something different than evolution. They have something they have arbitrarily altered that is not evolution.

Secondly, they discard from the Word anything that doesn't agree with Evolution. So this cuts both ways really. They have to accept the claims of Scripture AS IS. AND they have to accept the claims of the theory of Evolution AS IS and show that they are reconcilable AS IS. No changes, no tweaking; Simply reconcile the two accounts and show that their claim that Evolution is compatible with the Bible is true.

If they cannot reconcile the two, they have a choice to make. Either be an Evolutionist or believe the Bible.

TE cannot be judged on a scientific standard, because there is no scientific proof of the hypothesis
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Guest shiloh357
I struggle to know where to even start with this. Shiloh, I make no assumption about how much contact you have with TE'ers. The central disagreement we seem to have about the nature of TE'ers is their so called rejection of the bible. I have no doubt that you have been exposed to TE'ers who are so liberal in their beliefs that they reject God as described in Genesis, reject His moral laws and His authority.

I think you have made some assumptions at least on subconscious level. It would be easy to think that I am only referencing the TE

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Guest shiloh357
They do not reject God as Creator. The y differ from creationists not on His role as Creator, but His mode of Creation. The distinction is very important.

Which is still just as bad. They are still challenging His authority and integrity in the matter. Their claim is that God designed Evolution to be the means of bring abuot life. God set it in motion and then let Evolution run its course on its own.

For that reason they do not see God as having created man directly as the Bible says, but that man is the result of the process of Natural Selection. They don

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Guest shiloh357
Not a rejection of the BASIS for redemption, but the literal setting in which it occurred.
If you reject the literal story of Adam and Eve, you are rejecting the foundational information that forms the basis for why redemption is necessary and why Christ had to die. If the story is a myth, then redemption of Christ is a farce.

They still understand the need for redemption, this concept is reinforced all throughout the NT.
No, they don
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I am busy with family commitments and will respond in about 48 hours, I hope.

God bless

Candice

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Sorry to jump into the debate, but I've always wondered how someone reconciles what Jesus said in John 5:45-47. If you don't believe his writings -- how can you believe His words?

John 5:45-47 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

God bless,

George

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