can believers accept evolution?

[Guest shiloh357]

Again, this if your problem. And even if this problem were everyone's, it would not be appropriate to fabricate a solution that is not found in the plain reading of Scripture, particularly when you so staunchly promote it as being the very thing that prevents believers from being Christians. Making Scripture say something it does not is NEVER the correct solution, no matter how much musing you may do to justify your addition to it. Now you are free to make this argument you are making, but please don't pretend that it's found in Scripture, and please don't pretend that Scripture gives any other requirements for being a Christian than confessing with your mouth and believing in your heart. All else is the musings of men.

 

 

No, it's not my problem because I believe the Bible to be 100% true, accurate and inspired.   For the person who doesn't, the question is how do you set about to determine which parts are true and which parts are not  If the contention is that I don't have to believe the Bible is 100% true, then by what obective standard of measure do you know which parts to believe and which parts not to believe?   

 

I'll mention this once and not mention it again unless you wish to start a new thread discussing it, but your interpretation of the Bible is not equivalent with the Bible itself. Therefore, not trusting your interpretation is not the same as not trusting the Bible.

 

I am not claiming that my interpretation of the Bible is equivalent to the Bible.  In fact, that has nothing to do with what I said at all.   What I said is that you don't have the option, if you are a Christian of disbelieving the Bible because the Bible is at the heart of the everything God has to say to us.   If we can't trust God in Genesis, on what basis do you trust God in any other part of the Bible?   That is the issue I am addressing, which you seem to be making every effort to deflect from.

Again, your belief, not everyone's. Real saving faith is not intellectual. Real saving faith is not simply believing in God and Jesus because you read it in the Bible. Nowhere in the Bible does it state otherwise, much less state the position you are putting forward.

 

Again, faith rests on what you can depend on being true.  You can't put faith in something that may or may not be true depending on whether or not your personal worldview can tolerate that part of the Bible.

 

And contrary to your comment saving faith IS based on what you read in the Bible.   It was in the context of salvation that Paul said, "Faith comes  by hearing and hearing by the Word of God."   His argument in that chapter that the Jews needed to hear the Word of God in order to be saved,

 

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Esaias saith, Lord, who hath believed our report? So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Rom 10:13-17

 

Again, the Bible does not say this, and contradicts the Christian orthodoxy since the beginning of Christianity.

 

It is true whether you make room for that truth or not. Everything we know about God's character and operations come from the Bible.   I don't care abou Chrisitan orthodoxy.  I care about what the Bible says.

 

Your emotions towards evolution are not evolution. If you cannot demonstrate that evolution is incorrect, then your opinion that it is idolatry goes up in smoke. It is really that simple.

Evolution is held by Evolutionists of every stripe as the alternative to Genesis 1.  Evolution doesn't rely on and has no need of any intelligent cause or involvement at any stage of the process.  It is blind, unplanned unguided and wholly naturalistic from beginning to end.  Everyone knows that.   That it is held up as the competing and opposite model of Genesis 1, makes it an idol because it usurps God's role and authority over His creation.   That is what idols do. They replace God.   Evlolution is viewed as the alternative and relpacement for a creation model.

[alphaparticle]

Christians who accept evolution are not going to think that it could happen without God's intending it to happen, without God created the physical laws and physical stuff that goes into it and without God continually wiling it. God is absolutely recognized to be the ultimate Creator of everything. God is not any less omnipotent or fantastic for using evolution rather than some other method of creation. I believe God created the universe with the intention of us coming about. Because of that, some atheists accuse  me of accepting Intelligent Design. At that point I have to say this becomes an argument over semantics because both sides get overly emotional and territorial rather than focusing on the substance of what a Christian evolutionist believes about these matters.

[HumbleThinker]

No, it's not my problem because I believe the Bible to be 100% true, accurate and inspired.   For the person who doesn't, the question is how do you set about to determine which parts are true and which parts are not  If the contention is that I don't have to believe the Bible is 100% true, then by what obective standard of measure do you know which parts to believe and which parts not to believe?

"By what standard of exegesis is Genesis 1 wrong/inaccurate, but John 3:16 is true and acceptable?" is not a trouble that comes to my mind or affects me at all. It is a problem in your mind, thus it is your problem. Declaring that a problem presents trouble for me that I in no way recognize as valid does not make it my problem.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Again, faith rests on what you can depend on being true.  You can't put faith in something that may or may not be true depending on whether or not your personal worldview can tolerate that part of the Bible.

My faith rests in God where the Bible declares it should rest. The Bible does not say that my faith should rest in the Bible or any human conceptions of what makes it authoritative or not. Again, the world being round does nothing to my faith, but simply informs it that the Bible talking about a flat earth is a reflection of the cosmology of the area and time that God chose was not necessary to correct to achieve His spiritual purposes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And contrary to your comment saving faith IS based on what you read in the Bible.   It was in the context of salvation that Paul said, "Faith comes  by hearing and hearing by the Word of God."   His argument in that chapter that the Jews needed to hear the Word of God in order to be saved,

And this can be achieved without any of your problems or placing one's faith in the Bible. The point is to put one's faith in He who the Bible is pointing to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is true whether you make room for that truth or not. Everything we know about God's character and operations come from the Bible.   I don't care abou Chrisitan orthodoxy.  I care about what the Bible says.

And I care about what God says, Who is not bound by the Bible. Christians from the beginning have recognized the authority of Scripture while also recognizing the power of reason, nature, etc. The Bible even references creation to make various points about God. These observations clearly had meaning before they were made into Scripture.

 

 

Evolution doesn't rely on and has no need of any intelligent cause or involvement at any stage of the process.

Indeed, which is what all science is. But lack of necessity is not lack of existence, particularly when the hypothesized involvement is supernatural and thus not within the realm of science. Science is agnostic to the supernatural. Once you recognize this, how about we discuss the evidence of evolution?

Edited December 7, 2013 by HumbleThinker

[TheCurseOfTheRodain]

 

The Bible agrees with Shiloh here, you cannot be a Christian and say God used or did evolution. The two are 100% incompatible, because God already said in Genesis 1 and 2 that He didn't use any evolution at all, but rather that everything was good (and death and sickness and disease are not good, and you need these 3 to have evolution before Adam).

 

Where in the Bible does it mention evolution? And in anticipation of your next question, where does the Bible say that being in 100% agreement with the Bible (ignoring that there are multiple readings because that is a different topic altogether) is a requirement of being a Christian?

 

 

My next question was who is your favorite baseball team...Red Sox of course... ;0) Just teasing you.

The Bible doesn't mention evolution; that's the point - because it doesn't exist.

 

John 1 says Jesus is the Word of God, He IS the Bible itself. If you don't believe the Holy Bible, you are saying you don't believe Jesus. You are called to be a BELIEVER (of God), that means you believe whatever He says no matter what you've been told to the contrary without reservation. He says he took 6 literal days (yoms in the Hebrew, literal 24-hour solar days) to create everything. So we believe Him. Otherwise you say He is lying. You can't pick and choose what to believe in the Holy Bible, it's a straight shot, you have to believe the whole thing, because it's actually Jesus Himself.

[HumbleThinker]

The Bible agrees with Shiloh here, you cannot be a Christian and say God used or did evolution. The two are 100% incompatible, because God already said in Genesis 1 and 2 that He didn't use any evolution at all, but rather that everything was good (and death and sickness and disease are not good, and you need these 3 to have evolution before Adam).

 

Where in the Bible does it mention evolution? And in anticipation of your next question, where does the Bible say that being in 100% agreement with the Bible (ignoring that there are multiple readings because that is a different topic altogether) is a requirement of being a Christian?

 

My next question was who is your favorite baseball team...Red Sox of course... ;0) Just teasing you.

The Bible doesn't mention evolution; that's the point - because it doesn't exist.

 

John 1 says Jesus is the Word of God, He IS the Bible itself. If you don't believe the Holy Bible, you are saying you don't believe Jesus. You are called to be a BELIEVER (of God), that means you believe whatever He says no matter what you've been told to the contrary without reservation. He says he took 6 literal days (yoms in the Hebrew, literal 24-hour solar days) to create everything. So we believe Him. Otherwise you say He is lying. You can't pick and choose what to believe in the Holy Bible, it's a straight shot, you have to believe the whole thing, because it's actually Jesus Himself.

Good thing you were just teasing because my answer would have been the Phillies.

The Bible doesn't mention a lot of things, though, like computers or modern medicine or most of the planets or gravity or the Bible even, yet all of those things clearly do exist.That seems like a rather short-sighted argument in this respect. As far as when you said "John 1 says Jesus is the Word of God, He IS the Bible itself," this is why I'm not particularly a fan of calling the Bible the Word of God. Depending on how literally sometimes takes that phrase, it essentially becomes the equivalent of transubstantiation, which I also don't believe. It's not an invalid usage of the phrase to call the bible the Word of God, but for reasons just like this, I find it more cumbersome than it's worth. Jesus, obviously the spiritual aspect and not the human aspect but I'm sure we both agree on that, may be IN the Bible (ie. the Bible CONTAINS the Word of God), but it can hardly be said that He literally is the Word of God. Just as I cannot literally eat and digest the Word of God, I cannot rip up and burn the Word of God, which I clearly can do with the Bible. What I can't do is rip up and burn what is CONTAINED spiritually in the Bible.

Also, the Bible isn't mentioned in the Bible because it didn't exist yet, so I think it would be a stretch to say that the Bible says Jesus is the Bible. The Bible was not there in the beginning when God created the heavens and the Earth, nor is it God. God is not transubstantiated into the Bible every time someone writes down Scripture or mass produces it at a printing factory. Jesus is the Word made flesh. The Bible is not the Word made ink and paper.

And I'm trying really hard not to derail this thread with speaking about the different manners we interpret Scripture, and thus the false equivocation of the Bible with one's interpretation of it, so I think I will make a new thread for this shortly. The short version, though, is since the Bible is composed of language, it cannot say anything in and of itself, for all language must be interpreted before we can obtain its meaning. Therefore it is incorrect to say, for example, "So we believe Him. Otherwise you say He is lying." It would be more correct to say that "So I believe this to be the correct interpretation of Genesis 1 (ie. that it's historical and should be taken literally). If you do not believe me, then you disagree with my interpretation." That would be a more precise and accurate depiction of the matter.

[OldSchool2]

 

... Second, the progression of man is an antiquated scientific notion that has fallen out of favor in the mid-20th century at the latest. A similar concept was the Great Chain of Being. Most popular conceptions of evolution as a progression can be traced to the oft-maligned and oft-misunderstood March of Progress illustration, which was published in 1965. For the very reason you stated, scientists confirmed with certainty that evolution does not work in terms of progress or direction. Modern genetics, including the randomness of mutations and the unity of life (ie. nearly universal genetic code among other aspects), make belief in evolution with a direction impossible.

 

Yet the modern human genone study I linked still claims to show a human divergence from a single branch of simian life, which sounds very directional to me.

 

And as for this claim:

 

"The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics, since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws."
 

Speaking of misconceptions, "survival of the fittest" isn't evolution, or even so-called micro-evolution, but the natural selection of life that had supposedly already evolved into a defined genus and species.

 

And increasing randomness in any system doesn't lend itself to the stable construction of long proteins and amino acids: the building blocks of life that must also all be L- isomers in order to function.

[Guest shiloh357]

My faith rests in God where the Bible declares it should rest. The Bible does not say that my faith should rest in the Bible or any human conceptions of what makes it authoritative or not.

 

There is a huge hole in your logic, there.   The Bibles says we should trust in God, but if your faith doesn't rest in what the Bible says, how can you trust that the Bible is right in telling you that you should trust God?  On what basis can you select which parts of the Bible's instructions to trust and which not to trust?  I am interested in your exegetical process.   If the Bible is not the ground and basis for our faith in God, what is?  

 

The Bible tells us we put our faith in God, but it doesn't ask us to do that in a vacuum.  The Bible tells us why, and it recounts for us what God has done in the past.  But if the argument is that I don't need to place any faith in Scriptures and what they say about God, then on what basis do we know that the Bible is justified in claiming that God is worthy of our faith and trust?  Your approach makes the Bible servant to the reader, making the Bible expendable at any point where it makes a claim you are not prepared to accept.  

 

God and His Word are one (John 1:1-3)  and the Bible says that God maginfies His word above His own Name (Psalm 138:2).  So God places a huge amount of importance on His word.  His word is exalted above His Name.  His Name represents the glory of His character and reputation.  It represents His integrity.   His faithfulness is what the Psalmist has in view.   God will keep His word and He will honor it because it is of prime importance to HIm.

 

You are arguing for the right to selectively decide which parts of the Bible you will trust and without realizing it you are claiming that God can only be trusted when it suits you to trust Him. You cannot separate God from the Scriptures.  He has invested Himself completely in His Word to be faithful to it, 100%

 

 

Again, the world being round does nothing to my faith, but simply informs it that the Bible talking about a flat earth is a reflection of the cosmology of the area and time that God chose was not necessary to correct to achieve His spiritual purposes.

 

 

Oh please...  The Bible doesn't claim the earth was flat.  Ancients already knew the earth was a sphere.  It had been calculated out and determined to be spherical long before Jesus came on the scene.  Even in the advent of Christianity the spherical view of the earth was held by the vast majoritiy of Christian scholars only about 4 or 5 early church misinterpreted Psal 104:2-3 because they failed to understand the text was using a figure of speech and not making a geographic claim.  One of the biggest historcal blunders of recent times is the misgiven notion that everyone believed the earth was flat. 

 

Ancient people were not stupid and were far more intellectually advanced than they are given credit by people today. 

[gray wolf]

Yes, the earth is depicted in Job rather accurately:

Job 26:7

He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.

[HumbleThinker]

... Second, the progression of man is an antiquated scientific notion that has fallen out of favor in the mid-20th century at the latest. A similar concept was the Great Chain of Being. Most popular conceptions of evolution as a progression can be traced to the oft-maligned and oft-misunderstood March of Progress illustration, which was published in 1965. For the very reason you stated, scientists confirmed with certainty that evolution does not work in terms of progress or direction. Modern genetics, including the randomness of mutations and the unity of life (ie. nearly universal genetic code among other aspects), make belief in evolution with a direction impossible.

 

Yet the modern human genone study I linked still claims to show a human divergence from a single branch of simian life, which sounds very directional to me.

 

And as for this claim:

 

"The thermodynamics argument against evolution displays a misconception about evolution as well as about thermodynamics, since a clear understanding of how evolution works should reveal major flaws in the argument. Evolution says that organisms reproduce with only small changes between generations (after their own kind, so to speak). For example, animals might have appendages which are longer or shorter, thicker or flatter, lighter or darker than their parents. Occasionally, a change might be on the order of having four or six fingers instead of five. Once the differences appear, the theory of evolution calls for differential reproductive success. For example, maybe the animals with longer appendages survive to have more offspring than short-appendaged ones. All of these processes can be observed today. They obviously don't violate any physical laws."

 

Speaking of misconceptions, "survival of the fittest" isn't evolution, or even so-called micro-evolution, but the natural selection of life that had supposedly already evolved into a defined genus and species.

 

And increasing randomness in any system doesn't lend itself to the stable construction of long proteins and amino acids: the building blocks of life that must also all be L- isomers in order to function.

Branching being the operative word. Branching is the current understanding of evolution and better describes what we see than progression. For example, the common ancestor between chimps and humans branched into many other different species who became distinct populations from this common ancestor. Some likely became extinct without branching, but others branched into ancestors of further species who eventually branched into modern humans and chimps and other primate species we see. The idea of progression has at least two major flaws that do not fit what we see. First, many uses of it imply that the former ancestral species "changes into" or "becomes" or even "gives birth to" another species, thus causing the ancestral species to disappear because it has become something else. This is false.

Second, progression has the idea of a branching species being "better" or "more complex" or whatever than the ancestral species. This is also untrue if for no other reason than there is no objective standard by which to say one species is wholly better than another and evolution does not always go from complex to simpler or simpler to complex. It's all dependent on the environment and the niches that each species is competing for. In addition, an ancestral species can produce branch into multiple species, not just one. Hopefully this clears some things up. Good discussion so far.

And as far as your last couple of sentences go, I am unsure what you mean by them. Could you elaborate, please?

Edited December 7, 2013 by HumbleThinker

[HumbleThinker]

There is a huge hole in your logic, there.   The Bibles says we should trust in God, but if your faith doesn't rest in what the Bible says, how can you trust that the Bible is right in telling you that you should trust God?

This is a good question. And the answer is a personal conviction by God. Now this experience did come through the Gospel which is contained in the Bible, but simply hearing the Gospel would not have been enough. Without God's grace, no human can rightly place their faith in him. Anything else is simply an intellectual assent.

Oh please...  The Bible doesn't claim the earth was flat.  Ancients already knew the earth was a sphere.  It had been calculated out and determined to be spherical long before Jesus came on the scene.  Even in the advent of Christianity the spherical view of the earth was held by the vast majoritiy of Christian scholars only about 4 or 5 early church misinterpreted Psal 104:2-3 because they failed to understand the text was using a figure of speech and not making a geographic claim.  One of the biggest historcal blunders of recent times is the misgiven notion that everyone believed the earth was flat. 

 

Ancient people were not stupid and were far more intellectually advanced than they are given credit by people today.

The Earth is said to have four corners, an ability to see the entire earth from a mountain, a circle, immobile, etc, all of which perfectly aligns with what we know about the ancient near east cosmology. Do I really need to pull out the verses that state this? The arbitrariness here is that you will claim that these verses are metaphorical or that they mean something else other than their plain meaning, yet this same measure will not be applied to those verses that you claim must be taken literally. Another example is meteorology. Meteorology cannot be true because the Bible claims that God Himself makes it rain and frost. You can claim that it is being metaphorical, but then you will have to present a measure for calling it metaphorical and then demonstrate that the verses you claim must be taken literally do not also fall into this measure.