Does Evolution Conflict With the Bible?

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
Nyril
Scholar
Posts: 431
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 1:21 pm

Does Evolution Conflict With the Bible?

Post #1

Post by Nyril »

I contend that every branch of belief that does not require a young Earth is not entirely incompatible with evolution. If you view the bible/koran/torah as a general life guide, a means through which one can better oneself and serve your deity of choice, without requiring that every word be a literal truth, then there is no apparent conflict that I can see.

I've heard a great deal of people dictate how evolution basically tells god what it can or cannot do, while they themselves impose strict limitations on what they are willing to believe he could do.

Instance 1:

The god you describe often enough does not seem to be one mostly concerned with instant gratification. If I'm wrong on this point, do correct me, but I think all of you can agree at this point that god is willing to wait for good things to occur, and has patience of such that no mortal can compare.

If such a god is an accurate picture of what you believe in, why would it not do something amazing clever like create a single self-replicating polymer in a sea of chemicals and then proceed to watch it blossom and grow until it got us several billion years down the road? Although the holy books get a number of the fine details wrong (we can forgive the translations a bit), it seems to allude that this is entirely what could of happened:
Genesis
1:11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.

1:12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
You can't say for sure what precisely god did when he created the Earth, such details were simply not included in the bible/torah/koran. You can't say he did it one way or another, but I read this to say that god wanted life on the Earth, and it let the Earth take care of the fine points once the process had started.

Instance 2:

Lets step back a bit. We've covered the idea that god may have simply created everything up to the Earth and then stuck some chemicals on it, but why god need to go that far? That seems like a horrifying amount of detail work, something that although not difficult for an all-powerful being, is not consistent with the way we're told the god operates.

You tell me that this god thought of a flood as a good idea when such a being could easily of zapped all the wicked folk off the surface of the Earth, but such a description is useful for our purposes. If god was willing to go to all that effort and wait out all that time to have god's task complete, why not the same with the Universe?

Why create all the stars, galaxy's, and planets, when a simple bing-bang event, carefully created, would yield us in 15 billion years. I've heard that god wouldn't of done it that for a number of nebulous reasons, but that is not consistent with the bible. Lets review.

City into salt, rather then simply vanish the city.
Flooded the Earth, rather then simply vanish the bad folk.
Important prophet/son/etc... to convince the masses on foot, rather then spelling "Worship me fools!" in the stars.
Plagues of Egypt, rather then simply snap the followers out of safety and into paradise.

All the indications your holy books give is that this god is a god that is willing to wait things out a bit, a god that is not concerned with instant gratification, a god which is relatively patient.

Why then, would you tell me that god's greatest work, all of creation, was made in an instant (or something in that vicinity) when god had the option of waiting for his greatest work to come to fruition over the billions of years?

User avatar
YEC
Sage
Posts: 500
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:44 pm

Post #11

Post by YEC »

The subject line asked:
Does Evolution Conflict With the Bible?


The simple answer is...YES.

The bible says that God made Adam from the dust then Eve from Adams rib....there is no way this can represent evolutionism.

Timothy helps confirm this when he wrote the folowing:
1TI 2:13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve.

It should also be noted that Pauls confirms Adam was made from the dust.
1CO 15:47 The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven.

So, does the bible conflict with evolutionism..there is no way you can say it doesn't and leave the verses presented above in the in the Word of God.

User avatar
YEC
Sage
Posts: 500
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:44 pm

Post #12

Post by YEC »

nyril said:
You can't say for sure what precisely god did when he created the Earth, such details were simply not included in the bible/torah/koran. You can't say he did it one way or another,

In some instances you can. For example Gods Word tells us that he created Adam from the dust then Eve from his rib...I can say that is precisely what God (Jesus) did.

Because the bible tells us this is how God did it I can say for sure that God didn't do it any other way.

After all, if God used evolution to create why didn't he say that from the animals he made animals and from the animals he formed mankind?

User avatar
YEC
Sage
Posts: 500
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:44 pm

Post #13

Post by YEC »

nyril also wrote this about the flood:

You tell me that this god thought of a flood as a good idea when such a being could easily of zapped all the wicked folk off the surface of the Earth, but such a description is useful for our purposes. If god was willing to go to all that effort and wait out all that time to have god's task complete, why not the same with the Universe?

In a way the flood wasn't bad. Perhaps it was a good idea after all.....The flood waters created all the fossil fuels...coal, oil, natural gas etc...which is something we depend on as humans.

User avatar
YEC
Sage
Posts: 500
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2004 6:44 pm

Post #14

Post by YEC »

nyril posted:
Yes, but the rapture simply starts a far longer process in which people are judged, people are sent to hell

I don't think that is quite right. I believe by a persons action of not accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ presented to each and every one of us by God the father...the said person decides for themself that they do not wish to spend eternity with their creator....and sends themself to hell.

I don't believe if it's fair to blame God for sending you to hell.

User avatar
juliod
Guru
Posts: 1882
Joined: Sun Dec 26, 2004 9:04 pm
Location: Washington DC
Been thanked: 1 time

Post #15

Post by juliod »

Well. this might not be quite accurate. I don't think the ancients could have conceptualized a "billion" back then.
Well, yes, you are probably right. If, that is, we agree that the bible was the product of Bronze-Age mythogenesis. Which I think we may.

DanZ

User avatar
juliod
Guru
Posts: 1882
Joined: Sun Dec 26, 2004 9:04 pm
Location: Washington DC
Been thanked: 1 time

Post #16

Post by juliod »

I do say that unless the bible must be the literal word-for-word truth, there is no apparent conflict.

Fair enough. But what if we take the bible as concept-for-concept rather than word-for-word. Genesis 1 and 2 present a clear story (or stories, since they are different) of special creation. even if you strip away all the details, you are still left with the basic story of creation by a specific deity for specific reasons at a certain time.

Unless you want to remove all the words of Genesis 1 and 2 you will still conflict with evolution and science.

DanZ

User avatar
harvey1
Prodigy
Posts: 3452
Joined: Fri Nov 26, 2004 2:09 pm
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 2 times

Post #17

Post by harvey1 »

YEC wrote:After all, if God used evolution to create why didn't he say that from the animals he made animals and from the animals he formed mankind?
"And the Lord God formed adamah of the slime of the adamah: and breathed into the face of it the breath of life, and adamah became a living thing." (Gen 2:7)

"And the Lord God having formed out of the adamah all the beasts of the field, and all the fowls of the air, and brought them to adamah to see what it would be called: for whatsoever adamah called any living thing the same is its name." (Gen 2:19)

Notice that adamah means 'clay' (Hebrew for 'adamah' means earth substance; clay is the Hebrew origin of this word). Therefore, if you read Gen.2:7 and Gen.2:19, what it says is that God took the slimy clay and formed a special kind of clay - life.

What God did, according to Genesis, is take living life (from slimy clay) and then he waited to see how life would identify the functions of the animal kingdom (i.e., evolution would decide how life would evolve). That is, in the Hebrew world, to call something a name was not just to say "hey, how you doin'?". Rather, it was to give a function for something. The context is entirely evolutionary and would absolutely make no sense if the first man was just giving Hebrew names to animals. In fact, it would completely lose the meaning since there are now many other languages so the naming of animals would be completely lost to the other 6 billion people (and growing) on the planet.

User avatar
juliod
Guru
Posts: 1882
Joined: Sun Dec 26, 2004 9:04 pm
Location: Washington DC
Been thanked: 1 time

Post #18

Post by juliod »

You made the assertion. All I ask is for you to substantiate your claim. Otherwise, it is just a blanket statement that has no basis to it.
OK, OK. The big three sciences that directly contradict creationism are biology, geology, and astronomy. Their closely associated fields are also taken down: biochemistry, geophysics and astrophysics. General physics is wiped out by the creationist claims about the speed of light. Chemistry is incompatible in terms of the chemical basis of evolution and genetics, and creationist notions about organic vs inorganic chemistry. Physical chemistry is in conflict due to phoney thermodynamic creationist arguments.

Creationism is even hostile to pure math in that they constantly misuse propability arguments.

I can't think of any field of science that isn't fundementally in conflict with creationism.

Furthermore, your statement was "evolution (and every other field of science) conflicts with the bible. " not "every field of science conflicts with creationism".
Genesis 1 and 2 are integral parts of the bible. The stories they tell are at least clear, if not accurate. Therefore the bible = creationism in this context.

DanZ

User avatar
Nyril
Scholar
Posts: 431
Joined: Tue Oct 19, 2004 1:21 pm

Post #19

Post by Nyril »

If abiogenesis is indeed left out of evolution, then it would seem like the Bible is even more compatible with evolution since it offers an explanation for the origin of all life, whereas evolution does not.
Evolution is not concerned with the creation of life, merely what happened after it was created. To force evolution to include abiogenesis is the same as forcing the Universal Law of Gravitation to include the big bang.

As the Universal Law of Gravitation works the same no matter how the matter in the universe got here, be it god or some other means of creation, evolution is the same no matter how life got started on the planet, be it god or some other means of creation.
The bible says that God made Adam from the dust then Eve from Adams rib....there is no way this can represent evolutionism.
I'm not certain if I've emphasized this enough, but if you believe that the bible is more a symbolic guide to following god then the literal word-for-word truth, you can understand that genesis is more of a symbolic description of the creation of the Earth, then a play-by-play historic account. If you're going to point that out, what about the talking snake which is introduced just a little bit later?
After all, if God used evolution to create why didn't he say that from the animals he made animals and from the animals he formed mankind?
Simple. The books also never say that god created bacteria, does that mean the bacteria are not the creation of god? The books also never mention gravity, cell theory, or one of a thousand other scientific principles that would of changed their view of the world. To say that evolution isn't true because the books don't hit you over head with the idea, is to say that bacteria aren't true either because they aren't mentioned either.
In a way the flood wasn't bad. Perhaps it was a good idea after all.....The flood waters created all the fossil fuels...coal, oil, natural gas etc...which is something we depend on as humans.
That's a topic for a different thread, but you can understand that he's willing to take the long way through to accomplish a task, a way that doesn't immediately yield the results he wanted.
I don't think that is quite right. I believe by a persons action of not accepting the sacrifice of Jesus Christ presented to each and every one of us by God the father...the said person decides for themself that they do not wish to spend eternity with their creator....and sends themself to hell.

I don't believe if it's fair to blame God for sending you to hell.
I don't quite see where I said that...Someone brought up the idea of the rapture as an example of god using an instant process instead of the long way around things, and I'm simply saying that the rapture isn't so instant, voiding its use in that context.

User avatar
juliod
Guru
Posts: 1882
Joined: Sun Dec 26, 2004 9:04 pm
Location: Washington DC
Been thanked: 1 time

Post #20

Post by juliod »

The bible says that God made Adam from the dust then Eve from Adams rib....there is no way this can represent evolutionism.
He's right!

But wrong as well.

The bible does say that, and that is what they intend you to believe.

But "dust", on a prebiotic earth, would be mineral, compounds of silicon and carbonates. We aren't made of "dust". QED.

DanZ

Post Reply