Does Evolution Conflict With the Bible?

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

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Nyril
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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?

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YEC
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Post #21

Post by YEC »

harvey1 wrote:
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.
harvey1, you seemd to miss the verse where it says Adam was formed from the dust then Eve from his rib (side).

You had said...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).

Where did the bible say evolution? Did you add that? I looked in my bible and couldn't find any mention of evolution.

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Nyril
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Post #22

Post by Nyril »

juliod wrote:
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.
I disagree. Only young Earth creationism is really at odds with the sciences. If you don't require the earth to have been created last thursday (in accordance with the theory of last Thursdayism) there is no major conflict with the sciences.

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Post #23

Post by YEC »

juliod wrote:
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
juliod...if God created Eve from a rib....why not Adam from the dust just as written?

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Post #24

Post by YEC »

Nyril posted:
I disagree. Only young Earth creationism is really at odds with the sciences.

I beg to differ.

the bible says animals reproduce after their kind.....so far that hold true.

No speies of animal has ever evolved into anoother species of animal that is not a represenative of a diferent genera.

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Post #25

Post by YEC »

I see what's happening here...some of the posters on this board are leaving out an important aspect of biblical hermenuitics when they try to tells us what a peice of scripture is saying.

They always seem to forget to see what the rest of the bible says about a particular topic.

When you interpret scripture...you just can't add what ever you want between the lines.
It doesn't work that way.

If you want to include evolutionism in Genesis you need to find support in the rest of the bible so you can present a line of theology that up holds your claims of evolutionism.

In my post I presented a few verses that strongly contradict the concept of biblical evolutionism...you on the other hand have presented nothing to support evolutionism other than inserting the theory into the opening chapter of Genesis.

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Post #26

Post by harvey1 »

YEC wrote: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.
“And the LORD God caused a deep haitus to overthrow adamah and it remained a long time. And God took one of the cells [from the adamah] and closed up the living thing. And the Lord God built the cell which he took from adamah into a female animal: and it came to pass to adamah. And the adamah intended: This now is substance of substance, and animal of animal; she shall be identified as female animal, because she was captured out of the adamah." (Gen. 2:21-23)

All that tells me is that life (adamah) had cells taken from it which God fashioned or built the female sex which became the same substance and animal type as the adamah in question. It strikes me as evolutionary since the 'overthrow' of adamah suggests something fell out of the sky, so who knows, maybe God hit the earth with an asteroid which brought life to near extinction (deep haitus). Somehow a cell was captured by the adamah and life evolved sex. What is the big deal here?
YEC wrote:"For Adam was formed first, then Eve."
Yes, Paul was right. The clay was made into life, and then females evolved after that. (i.e., in ancient times the power of creation was a masculine quality, so they would consider unisexual organisms as masculine).
YEC wrote: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.
What you miss in your understanding is the opening statement in Genesis 2:

"Such is the evolution of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 2:4)

So, since you missed reading verse 4, of course you miss the whole evolutionary history of Genesis 2. Also, notice it is here referred to as a day (Hebrew 'yom') - (so any argument for 7 yoms being 7 days is not valid...). In any case, as you would expect with any evolutionary history, as you move along in Genesis 2, the time setting is getting closer and closer to modern times.

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Post #27

Post by harvey1 »

YEC wrote:Where did the bible say evolution? Did you add that? I looked in my bible and couldn't find any mention of evolution.
Gen.2:4 "Such is the evolution of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 2:4)

The Hebrew word here which is shown as evolution (above) is 'towl'dah' which means generations of the heavens and earth (not people). So, the only possible interpretation is evolution (i.e., heavens and earth do not have sex and multiply, but they do evolve).

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Nyril
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Post #28

Post by Nyril »

I beg to differ.

the bible says animals reproduce after their kind.....so far that hold true.
How does this support young Earth creationism? Old Earth Creationists don't see the same book the way you do.
No speies of animal has ever evolved into anoother species of animal that is not a represenative of a diferent genera.
I'm afraid I don't understand what you're saying here. Could you please rephrase it? I don't want to go off on a tangent with a response and find I failed to address your point.

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Post #29

Post by The Happy Humanist »

juliod wrote:
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
We may indeed.
:whistle:
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Post #30

Post by Yarr the Pirate »

YEC wrote: No speies[sic] of animal has ever evolved into anoother[sic] species of animal that is not a represenative of a diferent[sic] genera.
Unfortunately, this is what the Ye Creationists will always tell us. By never defining what makes a species a species, a genera a genera, or a kind a kind to them- they can simply say that evolution never occurs. If an animal evolves into a different species, they'll simply change their definition of species as YEC is doing here.

Case in point - I remember Ron Rayborne trying to disprove Kent Hovind by showing him that the polar bear was a different species from the grizzly bear by pointing out many characteristics that make them radically different.

To refute, Hovind simply stated, and I quote: "They are still bear! [sic] This hardly proves bears came from a rock! I will send the evidence to the committee is [sic] you like but I fear they will laugh."

(sidebar: Kent never sent the evidence to the committee)

They set the goalposts wherever they see fit (evolution must prove something came from a rock, all dogs are the same 'kind' but no evidence of what a 'kind' is is given...), even if they don't put them in the stadium

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