Theological Problems with God-guided Evolution

[one.opinion]

3 minutes ago, Sparks said:

You literally said there was no need to investigate it which means you turned down studying it. 

I meant that since these are terms I already understand, I don’t need to study more about these terms. I fully intend to continue study of the Bible.

[Sparks]

1 minute ago, one.opinion said:

I meant that since these are terms I already understand, I don’t need to study more about these terms. I fully intend to continue study of the Bible.

So, you are back to not studying it which is what I originally stated.   

[one.opinion]

6 minutes ago, Sparks said:

So, you are back to not studying it which is what I originally stated.   

Studying the Bible, yes. Studying familiar terms, no.

What are your thoughts on the OP?

Edited July 3, 2021 by one.opinion

[AandW_Rootbeer]

28 minutes ago, one.opinion said:

Please take a trip back to the OP to see what I am or am not questioning.

After applying the research of others, including your own, created your conclusion that Earth is older than 6,000 years.   And from that, you have chosen that the process of Evolution best explains God's Creation due to an older Earth.   Couldn't the Earth be as old as you presume and God still created man as it is Written?   

The one constant about Evolution I believe, is that it explains in great detail after God Created man, all living creatures, plant life, microbes.   

I struggle in the area of accepting the several variations of idealism's pertaining towards the Origin of Life as being relative to Evolution.   We're basically looking a Mathematical explanation of a Chemical Chain Reaction that ignited the process of Life itself.   One would have to "Reason" that God would mention this process, rather than going into the detail of scooping dirt up, forming man, and being the Spark to ignite Life.   Somewhere between Chemical Chain Reaction, that sparked a journey from the multitude of processes including Natural Selection, Chance, the evolving of single cell to multiple complex cell, Specie to new Specie, does not seem at all to fit the Narrative from God claiming, He formed man and Breathed into him Life.

 

Chemical Chain Reaction, followed by the fore-mentioned process to the evolved state of man, logically is a very long process.   But it does not match from Sunrise God formed man, Breathed life into him, Sunset.   I am struggling how to connect the two viewpoints here.  Time in itself is a Creation by God, but by the sixth day, the Earth was already in a state of existence between Sunrise and Sunset.   And God claims that man was Created between a single period of Sunrise to Sunset.   From Chemical Chain Reaction to the evolved state of man would require around 365,000,000,000 Sunrises to Sunsets.   Even the Mathematics do not add up.   So I can't understand how one could use the Word of God to verify the Process involved with Evolution of the evolved state of man.

[teddyv]

7 minutes ago, AandW_Rootbeer said:

So I can't understand how one could use the Word of God to verify the Process involved with Evolution of the evolved state of man.

I don't know of anyone verifying the process of evolution with the Bible. Te Bible is silent on the how but concerned with relaying fundamental/transcendent truths pertaining to our relationship to the Creator.

It's first and primary audience was the early nation of Israel. They were steeped in Egyptian cosmology.

[Alive]

I did not read through the entire thread, so forgive me if this has been covered.

Question to the OP: do you believe that biological life started via a thing call chance?

If so, we may have a different conversation regardless of whether you think God set up the soup to allow for such.

If not, then at what point did God create biological life and set things in motion?

[teddyv]

Not the OP, but of similar beliefs. God is the instigator and sustainer of life (and the entire cosmos). The record of the God's created world around us strongly points to an evolutionary model for the diversity of life (and as a geologist, a very old earth). As a Christian, I would clearly state that this was all God's doing. So, no, it was not chance.

[one.opinion]

11 minutes ago, AandW_Rootbeer said:

Couldn't the Earth be as old as you presume and God still created man as it is Written?

Yes, absolutely. Dr. Joshua Swamidass (MD/PhD), a computational biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, wrote a book that I've heard a lot about - The Genealogical Adam and Eve - that goes into that exact scenario. It turns out that Adam and Eve could very well have been created just as described in Genesis 1-2. Here is a good review of the book https://spectrummagazine.org/arts-essays/2021/genealogical-adam-and-eve-s-joshua-swamidass-book-review

I actually have the book, but have not yet gotten around to reading it.

21 minutes ago, AandW_Rootbeer said:

We're basically looking a Mathematical explanation of a Chemical Chain Reaction that ignited the process of Life itself.   One would have to "Reason" that God would mention this process, rather than going into the detail of scooping dirt up, forming man, and being the Spark to ignite Life.   Somewhere between Chemical Chain Reaction, that sparked a journey from the multitude of processes including Natural Selection, Chance, the evolving of single cell to multiple complex cell, Specie to new Specie, does not seem at all to fit the Narrative from God claiming, He formed man and Breathed into him Life.

I understand the conundrum. I believe it is important to consider the original audience for those passages - a people that had just been released from 400 years of bondage in an extremely idolatrous culture. God's major emphasis to His people was that He alone was Creator - what their culture had to tell them about their origins was completely untrue. The timing of the creation process was not the major emphasis - as we can see from the rest of the Bible.

[Sparks]

24 minutes ago, one.opinion said:

Studying the Bible, yes. Studying familiar terms, no.

So you plan to stick with eisegesis. 

25 minutes ago, one.opinion said:

What are your thoughts on the OP?

You already know.  Theological Evolution is no different than Evolution, except that you have tried to squeeze God into that religion.  It's standard bogus evolution + God

[one.opinion]

9 minutes ago, Alive said:

Question to the OP: do you believe that biological life started via a thing call chance?

As a short answer, absolutely not! I believe God is Creator and Sustainor of all things.

Longer answer - I believe God created the material of the universe instantaneously and created the first simple living things in a pattern that would allow the development of all of the living organisms that have ever inhabited the planet (much of which is now extinct) and eventually to His special creation - humanity.

I just mentioned it in another post, but I also recognize the possibility that God created Adam and Eve separately, just as described in Genesis. This view does lean on the presence of other biological humans outside of the Garden of Eden, though. This view is corroborated in Genesis 4.