Board index ‹ Creation and Evolution

[Newbie]

I mean, there are so many problems:

1. The creation story in Genesis does not even come close to representing our million year evolution. The idea of woman being created from man separately makes absolutely no sense by evolution. God created light before he created the stars which is a blatant contradiction. Don't you think God would have given Moses correct information?

2. How could sin enter the world if we gradually evolved over millions of years? What did our ancestors do literally that wasn't part of our natural evolution and survival that would cause damnation? How could we be responsible if God evolved us that way?

3. Who received the first soul? What difference did it make, considering other homo species were already intelligent with signs of ritual burials? It doesn't make sense that he created two people separately with the new power of spirituality awareness.

4. Many people suggest that the reason there is suffering in the world (IE natural disasters and disease) is because of our sinful nature. But what about the millions of years before our species? They loved and had families as well and suffered greatly by unknown natural disasters.

5. How can you believe a loving God sat by for millions of years idly while all this is going on to then deliver a message only some thousand years ago?

6. There was billions of years of life and global catastrophe before man that had life completely wiped out multiple times. How can a God that values life destroy his creation so many times? And how can you consider failed evolutionary processes deliberate good design?

7. Why is it that religion has evolved independently of each other in every culture? Don't you think this is all just primitive philosophy that naturally evolved in our pattern seeking species?

[jimwalton]

1. There are many interpretations of Genesis 1 that don't require a 6-day creation and a young earth understanding. A "recent" interpretation that is taking the world by storm is seeing that Genesis 1 is about function, not structure. It isn't about God making things as much as it is about him assigning roles and functions, bringing order to chaos. if that interpretation is correct (and it has a lot to speak in its favor), God didn't give Moses incorrect information at all.

2. Let's just suppose, for the sake of discussion, that the evolutionary model of human development is true. At a point in time when humans evolved to the capacity of moral culpability, that could be the point where Genesis 2 kicks in with its explanation. Humans were mortal ("made of dust", Gn. 2.7), and God at that point in their development recognized that they were capable of moral judgment, and so invited them to choose a path of goodness rather than evil (the notorious tree). Despite their capability to choose the good, they chose otherwise (a choice inherent in moral freedom), and God initiated a plan to win them over. Thus they are morally culpable.

3. Adam and Eve received the first soul. At a time of evolutionary development that humans became capable of moral judgment (see #2), God breathed into them the breath of life, and they were invested with souls. With God's "breath" in them, they had all the capabilities to choose godliness and good with their spiritual awareness. It has nothing to do with intelligence or ritual burials.

4. Natural disasters are most often the result of simple cause and effect that was built into the system. Our earth spins on its axis; the sun warms, and the places away from the sun cool. It creates winds that sometimes generate tornadoes and hurricanes. The earth is composed of tectonic plates in flux. There are positive benefits of tectonic movements, but also occasional quakes. So also with volcanoes. While human sin can be blamed for much suffering, it's certainly not the cause of all of it. We live as inhabitants of a planet of pros and cons, as all environments necessarily must be.

5. If we go by the hypothesis I have written, life on earth before "adam and eve" was animal life, not human per se. Once there was human life, moral culpability, and spiritual capacity, God was there delivering a message and revealing himself.

6. Evolutionary process almost by definition includes many random sequences (though not of necessity precluding a Guiding Hand on occasion). The value of life is not that it eventually ends. After all, the very circle of life requires eating and being eaten. We have found through history and prehistory that it's actually quite a good design of perpetuation of life forms and the renewal of life on the planet.

7. I think you'd be hard pressed to prove the evolution of religious thought. As far as I know that is a sequence yet to be established by the anthropological, sociological, and theological community of scholars. The Bible would contend that divergent and sundry religious expressions come from one of two sources: (1) Someone taking what they know to be true and deliberately warping it, and (2) Someone who doesn't know any better following an inherent God-sense inside of themselves.