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Definitely. I personally believe something (whether it be God, or what have you) created the universe, supplied it with the building blocks of life, and allowed evolution to take over.
There is nothing to substantiate such a position however.
But if you try to believe that the earth came about from some particles and forces... think about it! How much time would have to pass before each particle randomly forms something coherent? And then think about how many things we have which have randomly come together. Think about dna and its complexity. How much time would have had to pass before all this complexity RANDOMLY formed from something way too simple? If you really think about it, I don't think that earth was here long enough for this to have happened all by itself, by random chance.
We actually have telescopes now - the Hubble space telescope, for example - that have observed protoplanetary acretion disks in distant stellar systems. Therefore, we are certain that planets like the earth originate from molecular particles that come together in interstellar space.
Millions of years, let alone billions, are beyond the scope of human imagination or comprehension. Most of us can only think in terms of decades or centuries at most. This is why it may seem impossible for the earth or life to have formed based on timescales which we are familiar with.
Last edited by BigCityDreamer; 07-09-2013 at 09:13 AM..
There is nothing about evolutionary theory which would exclude the possibility of a creator.
What evolution does reveal is that if there is a creator, it is complex beyond any hope of our understanding its motivations. If humans as an end product was something desirable by this creator, it had the patience to wait around for 14 billion years to make us a going concern. That doesn't make us seem like much of a priority.
What the OP is describing is a form of theistic evolution. It's an idea that's been around for a long time, particularly among liberal Christians. It is an idea similar to deism which basically says the the watchmaker made the watch and then wandered off and lost interest. The main difference is that a Christian would say god didn't leave the scene, he just patiently watched it unfold.
My main issue with theistic evolution is that it has to strain to "spiritualize" a creation narrative that was either meant to be taken literally or should just be seen as a parable or metaphor of some kind about the loss of innocence when a person or society achieves independent thought.
If you have to jump through all those hoops to harmonize scripture with science maybe it would be easier to just admit that the quaint Bible story is incorrect, or just go with the metaphor / legend angle.
Nope. There's no unnecessary extra Creationist component, which just clouds the issues.
Of course anyone who argues that Evolution has no evidence, but by comparison there is "evidence" for Creationism, does not have a functioning nor even vaguely accurate definition of "proof", or of "evidence".
We now have loads of repeatable evidence for evolution, including the now-famous and inarguable (I LOVE THAT WORD!) 2008 published research by Dr. Richard Lenski of Michigan State U. ( I think..), where his diligent and documented 22 yr long sampling and collection of DNA from a single species of e. coli did, @ about generation 32,000, spontaneously bring forth a new species capable of doing things it's originating "parent" could not.
By definition, this is a new species,. Tough luck, denialistás everywhere.
Now yes, perhaps a Creator did insert Tab A of some DNA precursor into Tab B of another precursor, and thus create the first amino acid based DNA strands or preliminary molecules, but why? We don't need that input, since given enough time and trial & error tests over hundreds of millions of years in vast unfathomable volumes of primordial warm precursor-filled oceanic waters, it is a relatively simple outcome and product that it is essentially inevitable.
What we do have nowadays however, are fearful Creationists who don't now want to be left out in the cold by the relentless knowledge products of the new Science, coupled with the undeniably logical Scientific Method (The SM), where they have essentially put themselves into intellectual limbo by their years of denial, along with their raucous and combative refusal to accept what is now proven, not to mention imminently logical and understandable.
Also, given the new NEW NEW tool of DNA genome mapping, we can now show the lack of any need for some intermediate snapshot Missing Link version. Rather, we're all micro-transitional "Missing Link" versions, genetically progressing towards, in relative order of appearance, a new tribe, race, sub-species, and finally an all-new species. Undeniable.
So we have absolutely no need for any Creationist components nor overall control, all done a mere 6000+ years ago, complete with co-existing village pet dinosaurs (Yukk! what a hoot that idea is!). That is, unless one needs some transient "Feelin' Groovy and Warm!" byproduct to avoid having their communal feelings hurt.
But still, to be ever the open-minded one, I'll ask this: If some insistent Creationists still wish to assert that there is indeed some sort of necessity for even a Creationist perspective, or a joint Creationist-Pure Evolutionist project, please provide us with your point-form (NOTE: but not some purely emotional or faith-based..) reasonable rationale for that concept.
What evolution does reveal is that if there is a creator, it is complex beyond any hope of our understanding its motivations.
And therefore projections about God or God's intention, crafted by humans as all religion has been crafted, are almost surely false. Given that such projections could span an infinitely vast array of possibilities, the chances of having "gotten it correct" are infinitesimal.
Creationism as a start to evolution aka theistic evolution is merely a post-it note of godunnit onto the real science and discovery of evolution. This is because the original theist stance of godunnit ~6000 years ago is obviously refuted by real science, biology and geology; all with repeatable falsifiable checks and balances built in.
Simple understanding of genetics proves a single pair and esp a cloned pair cannot propagate a species, this holds for the fludd myth.
All of a sudden when the RCC accepted heliocentricism as opposed to geocentracism, the universe stopped rotating around the earth and now the earth rotates in of itself and around our sun.... Sound silly no? That is pretty much what theistic evolution is.
Religious dogma should have IMO morphed into the scientific fields by now but we all know what the RCC did in the past so maybe it is a good thing they remained separate.
Theistic evolution is merely a means of reinventing to fit the evidence of reality which theism is devoid of.
Evolution says "Thanks, but no thank you". It will progress in spite of the objectors of mindless religious zombies and their insistence that god somehow still has something to do with it.
You could probably redact the good parts of the bible into the size of a comic book and that would be good as you would also be able to roll it up and swat flies.
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Nope. There's no unnecessary extra Creationist component, which just clouds the issues.
for that concept.
