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I believe it's enough for me to say.... no body can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what the secrets of the universe are .... hence the debate that will continue until the end of time. I believe what I believe by faith but never check my brain at the door. Secularists will brand this as "presumption" and that's OK with me. Getting booed at "home" is the same as getting cheers in heaven.
I believe it's enough for me to say.... no body can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what the secrets of the universe are .... hence the debate that will continue until the end of time. I believe what I believe by faith but never check my brain at the door. Secularists will brand this as "presumption" and that's OK with me. Getting booed at "home" is the same as getting cheers in heaven.
...just sayin'
This secularist at least is fine with your attitude. As regards the evilushun debate, look at the facts, the argument from both sides, the evidence and make up your own mind. You will find that, if you have a god -belief, it will stay there, no matter whether you accept the case for evolution or not.
Most definitely it is a slippery slope for Christians...
Jesus states the following in Matthew 19:4-6, " He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
Please take note how Jesus is quoted as saying "at the beginning the Creator made them male and female"
According to Jesus, God (the Creator) did not use evolution (descent of all life from a common ancestor beginning with a prokaryotic life form(s) over eons of time) to make Adam and Eve.
Additionally, Jesus quoted directly from Genesis 2:24 (the allegedly allegorical tale), " For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh."
Some food for thought about how evolution (as defined by academia above) is not compatible with Christianity.
Central to Christianity is Christ died for our sins
The Bible states we are all sinners
Sin leads to death
So how does Christ's death help us? 1 Corinthians 15:22 provides an answer, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
But, if Genesis is an allegorical tale then wouldn't that make Adam and Eve allegorical characters.
If Adam (and Eve) are allegorical characters and we doubt them as real people how is it that "in Adam all die." How is it then that we can put faith that "in Christ all will be made alive."
Yes. Adam and Eve are allegorical characters for humans and how they deal with the problems of morality - working out what is right and wrong in relations with others. That of course raises a thorny question of what to do with the idea of original sin and why Jesus had to be sent to suffer and die in order to overcome it.
I can't fit that in with evolution, even if I can fit in Matthew 19. All I can say is, the truth cannot be a sin. If parts of the bible need to be regarded as approximations of the facts, then no god worthy of reverence and up to the praise heaped on it in its Holy Book is going to have a problem with someone looking at the evidence.
I know that sometimes pure faith, even in despite of contrary evidence, is regarded as better than faith based on evidence, but the individual has to decide on that.
If I can use Startrek episodes as parables, you can surely....pistols at dawn? The freak out is, so far as I can see, is a hard line on creation. It will not do to have God accomplish His methods through evolution, because evolution is not as described in genesis. It really is a case 'my uncle is not a monkey'. The whole idea is unacceptable. We are not animals, we are next best to the angels. This is the idea. It is a human pride in being God's summit of creation and the animals are there for us to use as we like.
Thus genesis has to be literal, and not an approximation of a billion years of evolution, and Jesus has to be saying that humans were created, man and woman, and there is no question of accepting that he might have been skipping a long and rather irrelevant lecture on natural selection in order to get to the point he was trying to make about marriage.
I'm late on this but I wanted to respond...I understand you don't think us evolving from animals is a very cool or special thing and I'm not sure I think it is either, but who are you or I to determine that? Its God's perogative to determine what he thinks is a special way of Creation and its also his choice on how to best reveal it in accordance to his plan and/or the listeners intelligence. His perspective is whats important, not ours; So he could have made us out of pink bunny fur and rhinosaurus dung if he thought it was special.
I've also heard that the Genesis Creation story was written in a "storybook-like" style of Hebrew writing so there may be alot of possibilities in how God saw Creation, even if it was some kind of evolutionary thing. I have no real clue on how God really did it, but assuming a book that is already known for occasionally using metaphors written originally to scientifically incompetant people MUST be as accurate as a sciencebook in how it describes creation is just silly. Its also important to mention that a generalized story of Adam and Eve is not necessarily incompatible with Evolution even if the mondern science is nearly 100% right. For all we know, Adam and Eve were the first two human homo sapien mutations lol. Anyways, the point is for modern Christianity to stop freaking out over this and pretending that being open minded enough to say that the first 2 chapters of Genesis MIGHT be a general or metaphorical view of Creation will be a slippery slope that will doom the bible and all Christianity.
I agree. What is God's perspective is not the question. Essentially, if we just believe on Faith that God dunnit, it is not for us to try to work out from His thoughts how he might have dunnit. But we can follow the clues in the evidence.
If the clues/evidence doesn't seem to back up a 6 day creation as described in genesis, then it can join Jonah and Job as metaphorical or symbolic stories.
The point is that evolution -theory is no threat to God - belief, but is IS a threat to strictly literal interpretation of the Bible as actual fact throughout.
I'm late on this but I wanted to respond...I understand you don't think us evolving from animals is a very cool or special thing and I'm not sure I think it is either, but who are you or I to determine that? Its God's perogative to determine what he thinks is a special way of Creation and its also his choice on how to best reveal it in accordance to his plan and/or the listeners intelligence. His perspective is whats important, not ours; So he could have made us out of pink bunny fur and rhinosaurus dung if he thought it was special.
I've also heard that the Genesis Creation story was written in a "storybook-like" style of Hebrew writing so there may be alot of possibilities in how God saw Creation, even if it was some kind of evolutionary thing. I have no real clue on how God really did it, but assuming a book that is already known for occasionally using metaphors written originally to scientifically incompetant people MUST be as accurate as a sciencebook in how it describes creation is just silly. Its also important to mention that a generalized story of Adam and Eve is not necessarily incompatible with Evolution even if the mondern science is nearly 100% right. For all we know, Adam and Eve were the first two human homo sapien mutations lol. Anyways, the point is for modern Christianity to stop freaking out over this and pretending that being open minded enough to say that the first 2 chapters of Genesis MIGHT be a general or metaphorical view of Creation will be a slippery slope that will doom the bible and all Christianity.
Very reasonable approach. Everyone seems to forget that it is not our physical bodies that are of concern to God . . . but our Spirit (living soul). That is what it means to say the Bible is to be interpreted spiritually and not carnally. Everything is stardust (or dust of the earth). So it is not difficult to imagine God selecting one of the evolved hominids to implant the conscious awareness (Spirit) that makes us uniquely human.
Indeed. The idea that the only choice is God -belief or belief in evilushun is a false one. The choice being offered by anti - evolutionists is: accept Genesis as literal fact, or accept the case for evolution. It is not even a question of rejecting Genesis entirely - we have seen how those who actually deny evolution is probable sometimes will direct us to linked websites that actually (tacitly) say that evolution (1) is true - and genesis, interpreted in the right way (a God 'day' - several billion years; waters gathered together in one place and dry land appears is a sorta summary of several super- continents) fits in with it.
(1) I am of course using the term in a strictly incorrect but popular misunderstanding sense
Very reasonable approach. Everyone seems to forget that it is not our physical bodies that are of concern to God . . . but our Spirit (living soul). That is what it means to say the Bible is to be interpreted spiritually and not carnally. Everything is stardust (or dust of the earth). So it is not difficult to imagine God selecting one of the evolved hominids to implant the conscious awareness (Spirit) that makes us uniquely human.
I do not know what you believe, creation or evolution, your faith is mystic. Spirit and soul are different, even it is hard for us to say what is of the soul and what is of the spirit.
I agree that the bible is to be interpreted spiritually and not carnally, that means by reason of our mind, what makes sense or what is logic, it is carnal. If our conscious awareness is our spirit, than this spirit has to be born again, that means to be connected, in union with the living God to be able to interpret the bible spiritually. And even than a believer can be deceived by another spirit.
I agree that their is much stardust. That makes me believe in creation, because if the moon would be billions of years in his place, every one would sink in meters of dust.
But I also believe that God created first the universe (we can see the light of stars millions of years away) and than the earth (Gen 1:1; Job 38:4-7)) He created a perfect world and not a chaos. This universe and earth is older than 6ooo years, the earth gives evidence of it. But God created in 6 days about 6000 years ago our world on the old earth He destroyed totally as Gen 1:2 gives witness.
I also believe in the unique creation of the human race. Not only that life is too complicated, that it can come by chance ,by evolution. Animals have not the creative intelligence or God-conscious, they are not created in God`s image. No monkey was ever seen praying, but humans do that all over the earth.
If we speak of evolution, it is more that man become like animals (beast in Revelation), there is no fear of God anymore, which is the beginning of wisdom. They that are wise in their own imaginations have become fools.
I...
I agree that their is much stardust. That makes me believe in creation, because if the moon would be billions of years in his place, every one would sink in meters of dust.
....
I suggest that you peruse this creationist site, before you plonk down assertions like these. What you believe is unimportant as regards the evolution debate. What stands up scientifically under discussion is important.
Whether you believe in God as a creator is up to the individual choice, but the correct evaluation and conclusions of the evidence related to the case for evolution is not.
I agree that their is much stardust. That makes me believe in creation, because if the moon would be billions of years in his place, every one would sink in meters of dust.
On the other thread about Noah's Ark and using a long ago dismissed bogus claim and how someone did not get the memo, this was the other claim I had in mind that I was going to compare that one to as not getting the memo that it shouldn't be used. This is one of the "poster-children" bogus claims. Just as an FYI, since you missed the memo, so is the "if we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys." You really don't want to rely on these to buttress your arguments.
It would behoove you to bookmark the link AREQUIPA referenced, and keep it handy.
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