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[Yellow Pages]

This might have been asked repeatedly here, but I'm a Christian who is curious of my fellow Christians' beliefs about these two.

I'm starting to believe that Evolution might be a thing. (I repeat. I'm a Christian, so I'm not being strayed away in my faith.) Of course, I believed in the young earth creation, but evolution is starting to make sense especially reading Genesis and matching the theory that comes with it. I still have to dig deeper to it though.

I hope by this thread, it won't spark some heated debates. Just want to see discussions and exchanging of ideas!!

What do you believe in? What are a few of the strong arguments that supports your belief? What are a few of the weakest arguments that the opposing belief has?

Thank you!!!

[jimwalton]

I believe in and subscribe to evolution. The science is undeniable.

You probably realize that there are good and strong Christians who take different positions about creation and evolution. There are 5 main positions:

• Young Earth, 6-day creation: The Earth is only about 6,000-10,000 years old, and God created the universe and everything we see in 6 24-hr days.
• Old Earth, 6-day creation: The universe is 13 billion years old, and the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, and God created it all in 6 days 13 billion years ago.
• Day-Age Theory: Each of the “days” of creation in Genesis aren’t literal days, but they represent long eras. For instance, the first “day” of creation (creation of light) could have been billions of years in the making. But each age follows the sequence as outlined in Genesis 1.
• Gap Theory: Genesis 1.1, like the first phase of creation, happened billions of years ago. Then something cataclysmic happened, and it was all turned “formless and void,” and God started the second phase of creation in Genesis 1.2, which happened more recently.
• Evolutionary Creationism: God created the universe and all that we see, but he used the processes of the Big Bang and evolution to created everything we see. If this is the position one takes, Genesis 1 is about how God ordered the universe to function (light functions to give us day, the Earth functions to bring forth vegetation, the heavenly bodies function to give us seasons, etc.), not about how He manufactured it. He certainly created (manufactured) it, but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about.

At the same time, there are 6 different ways to define “evolution.” Only #6 is completely contrary to Christianity.

• The ancient earth thesis, some 4.5 billion years old
• The progress thesis: The claim that life has progressed from relatively simple to relatively complex forms. In the beginning there was relatively simple unicellular life. Then more complex unicellular life, then relatively simple multi-cellular life (seagoing worms, coral, jellyfish), then fish, then amphibia, then reptiles, birds, mammals, and human beings.
• Descent with modification: The enormous diversity of the contemporary living world has come about by way of offspring differing, ordinarily in small and subtle ways, from their parents.
• Common ancestry thesis: Life originated at only one place of earth, all subsequent life being related by descent to those original living creatures—the claim that, as Gould puts it, there is a “tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy.” According to this theory, we are all cousins of each other—and indeed of all living things (horses, bats bacteria, oak trees, poison ivy, humans.
• Darwinism: There is a naturalistic mechanism driving this process of descent with modification: the most popular candidate is natural selection operating on random genetic mutation, although some other processes are also sometimes proposed.
• Naturalistic origins thesis: Life itself developed from non-living matter without any special creative activity of God but just by virtue of processed described by the ordinary laws of physics, chemistry, and biology.

So how can the Bible and evolution go together? Very easily if we take Christian position #5 and evolutionary positions #1-5. As long as we keep God as the central and necessary sovereign intelligence, power, person, and morality in the process, I don’t see where it’s a problem.

I subscribe to the interpretation of Genesis 1-2 laid out by Dr. John Walton in “The Lost World of Genesis 1” (https://www.amazon.com/Lost-World-Genesis-One-Cosmology/dp/0830837043/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=john+walton&qid=1564575785&s=gateway&sr=8-2). Briefly reporting, in it he asserts that Genesis 1 is about how God ordered the cosmos to function, not how He manufactured it. Certainly God created the universe (as taught in other verses in the Bible), but that’s not what Genesis 1 is about.

The first "day" is clearly (literally) about a period of light called day, and a period of light called night. It is about the sequence of day and night, evening and morning, literally. Therefore, what Day 1 is about is God ordering the universe and our lives with the function of TIME, not God creating what the physicists call "light," about which the ancients knew nothing.

Look through the whole chapter. It is about how the firmament functions to bring us weather (the firmament above and below), how the earth functions to bring forth plants for our sustenance, how the sun, moon, and stars function to order the days and seasons. We find out in day 6 the function of humans: to be fruitful and multiply, to rule the earth and subdue it. Walton contends that we have to look at the text through ancient eyes, not modern ones, and the concern of the ancients was function and order. (It was a given that the deities created the material universe.) The differences between cultures (and creation accounts) was how the universe functioned, how it was ordered, and what people were for. (There were large disagreements among the ancients about function and order; it widely separates the Bible from the surrounding mythologies.)

And on the 7th day God rested. In the ancient world when a god came to "rest" in the temple, he came to live there and engage with the people as their god. So it is not a day of disengagement, but of action and relationship.

In other words, it's a temple text, not an account of material creation. There was no temple that could be built by human hands that would be suitable for him, so God ordered the entire universe to function as his Temple. The earth was ordered to function as the "Holy Place," and the Garden of Eden as his "Holy of Holies." Adam and Eve were given the function of being his priest and priestess, to care for sacred space (very similar to Leviticus) and to be in relationship with God (that's what Genesis 2 is about).

You probably want to know about the seven days. In the ancient world ALL temple dedications were 7-day dedications, where what God had done to order his world was rehearsed, and on the 7th day God came to "rest" in his temple—to dwell with his people and engage with them as their God. That's what the seven days mean.

Back to evolution. Therefore Gn 1-2 make no comment on how the material world came about, or how long it took. We need science to tell us that. We need Gn 1-2 to tell us what it's there for (God's temple) and how it is supposed to function (to provide a place of fellowship between God and humans, and to bring God glory as an adequate temple for his Majesty).

Feel free to discuss this. For those who have never heard these ideas, it takes a little adjusting. But they make a whole lot of sense to me.

[The Beast]

Just something to consider with evolutionary position #6 (Naturalistic Origins Thesis): Remember that these so-called "ordinary" laws of biology, physics, and chemistry were created by God. You say that this thesis is incompatible with Christian belief, but would you consider that these very laws of our universe are the ways God set about God's creation?

[jimwalton]

The only part of #6 that's incompatible with God is that it doesn't allow for His existence. Of course I would consider that the laws of our universe are part of the functionality God imbued it with, but there are some people who define evolution as "God doesn't exist; life came about on its own." That's the part that is incompatible with Christian belief.

[Gauge]

I wouldn't necessarily say "the science is undeniable" if you also believe in God, seeing as you should also believe God owns science and can use the laws/rules of nature to do whatever he wants, even if it means breaking them. He could have made the earth fully formed by accelerating the aging process very quickly during the 6 days of creation, just like how he made man fully formed, as well as (so it seems, according to Genesis) the plants, animals, and trees.

[jimwalton]

> I wouldn't necessarily say "the science is undeniable" if you also believe in God

The only reason I say the science if undeniable is that on my research, reading, and many conversations with scientists, both secular and Christian, the science is so solid that it can be described as undeniable.

> seeing as you should also believe God owns science and can use the laws/rules of nature to do whatever he wants, even if it means breaking them.

Yes, I do believe that God owns science, but if He's involved in regularly and often breaking the laws, then science itself breaks down. Science is only valid if there is enough regularity, repeatability, and confirmability, which is what we see. Therefore, I have come to the conclusion that God often does not break the laws of nature, if at all. (I say "if at all" because I'm not necessarily convinced that miracles involve breaking the laws of nature, but that's another discussion.)

> He could have made the earth fully formed by accelerating the aging process very quickly during the 6 days of creation,

Yes, He could have, but in that case science is deceiving us at almost every turn. It's false knowledge. But if God "owns" science, then He is complicit in the deceit. We really can't believe much of anything that science is telling us because God made the world such that it lies to us. I have a deep theological problem with that.

> just like how he made man fully formed, as well as (so it seems, according to Genesis) the plants, animals, and trees.

As I mentioned, I take Genesis 1-2 to be an account of how God ordered the cosmos to function, not how He manufactured it (though He did manufacture it). This is taking the text quite literally. in Gn. 1.4, notice that God called the light "day." Odd that He didn't call it "light," since that's what it was and since the Hebrews had a word for light. But he called it "day," which is obviously a period of light. And he called the darkness "night," which is a period of darkness. So we're not literally talking about material manufacture but instead about how the light and darkness function—to give us periods of light and darkness, and since the text literally talks about those periods of light and darkness in regular and orderly sequence, what the text is literally talking about is evening and morning, i.e., the function of time. That's how to take the text literally.

And we can continue through the chapter. The Earth functions to bring forth vegetation. The heavenly bodies function to give us times and seasons. The fish, birds, and animals function to reproduce after their kind and fill the Earth. Humans function to rule the Earth and subdue it. This is what the text is literally about.

In that perspective, the Bible can be taken authoritatively and literally, we can have confidence in science as telling the truth, there is no conflict between Scripture and Nature (both perceived as revelations of God: Revealed in His Word and in the world), and we can affirm God as sovereign Creator, providential caretaker, and sustainer of life.

[Naugahyde]

Evolution is the only satisfactory way of understanding God's creation.

Attempting to posit a young earth comes with such a vast amount of critical problems that it results in denying the facts of one's own eyes simply out of a misplaced sense of loyalty to a particular interpretation of the text - an interpretation that is itself illogical and incoherent.

It results in being forced to believe in a God that created a deceptive world, one which to all our senses appears to be billions of years old, in a universe appearing to be even older, and yet this is all just God "testing our faith", by going around hiding old-seeming dinosaur bones deep underground, creating rock strata with decaying minerals that are already half-decayed, creating light that is already halfway to us from distant stars, red-shifted in such a way as to appear exactly as though its source is travelling away from us and has been for a considerable amount of time, creating background radiation in the universe that only appears to have come from a vast expansion of the universe billions of years ago. Why on earth would a loving God carry out such a petty and pointless act of deception? It goes against everything we know of His character.

Evolution is clear and simple, and perfectly rational. It takes the basic natural selection theory of Darwin, that the animal most suited to its particular environment will be more likely to survive and pass on its genes, and that random mutations and genetic variance, over time, leads to observable heritable changes in populations, thus causing genetic divergence between populations over successive generations, eventually developing into populations so different as to be considered different species.

This basic theory has been proven conclusively beyond doubt by many different fields of scientists, from biologists, to paleontologists, to geneticists, to embryologists, zoologists, botanists, and microbiologists. With so many independent lines of evidence from different fields all pointing to the same thing, this underlying mechanism at its most basic is now an irrefutable scientific fact (as much as anything can be in science - which is always looking to disprove its theories), along with the theory of gravity and the theory of motion.

The theory has developed considerably since Darwin's time, and is now understood as the "modern synthesis" or "extended modern synthesis" rather than simply "Darwinism" as it incorporates and is adjusted by ideas and lines of evidence from fields that Darwin never even dreamed of. The introduction of far more complexity has enriched the science immeasurably, but underneath it all, the basic theory of evolution by natural selection over successive generations is clear and simple, and can be seen and understood by anyone who cares to examine the evidence.

If you want to watch a quick and simple animation explaining a few of the converging independent lines of evidence then I'd recommend this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIEoO5KdPvg). It's only 11 mins long, and will provide a good grounding in a complex field.

[Rogue One]

I pondered over this a while and come to a firm conclusion. That being that the bible is not trying to convey a physical thing to you. The bible is Spirit breathed and it is meant to be understood by the mind that the Spirit inhabits, not so that we can obtain knowledge about our material world but rather so we can be assured of Gods love for us now and beyond this life.

When we seek truth about Christianity there are some big questions that should crop up.

Why is there conflict among us?

Why does God allow evil to happen to us?

Why do we die?

What is the point of Jesus dying?

Is the resurrection true? How do we know its true? Does it matter if its true?

If we are sinful how are we redeemable?

How does one man's death redeem Christians?

Is everyone saved?

Are only very few saved?

Is God knowable now?

How do we know when we have fellowship with God Almighty?

Are spiritual gifts still available to us today?

Is the Holy Spirit a real thing now?

How will God help me?

What do I have to do to be saved?

Notice that none the of those questions relate to anything physical at all. They relate to our relationship (or lack thereof) with God and what that relationship means.

Arguing about evolution and all that is a massive distraction from the important spiritual questions.

No one can actually know anything for 100% certainty.

God being God means that in the blink of an eye everything you ever knew could be replaced with an entirely new reality and this old one be completely non existent and every memory of it removed.

The most important thing about the beginning was that God said x and x was. God creates reality. Reality is sustained by God's word. The mechanics of it are no where near as important as that singular point. Within this reality, power is conferred to you, a living being within that sustained reality. You have the power to influence the reality you live in by your will. Whatever we humans are, it is clear that God wanted to confer God-like powers to us albeit in a creature sandbox. If we love each other as God loves us we do very well. When we do anything other than that, when we are selfish and self seeking, we sin. All have sinned. Because of this offenses sprout like weeds. One offense leads to another and it all leads to a merciful death. Trust me death isn't your enemy in this life. Eternal life filled with offenses would be the worst hell you could imagine. God loved us when he prescribed death to us. It was mercy.

So how to irradicate offenses?

Well, keeping God's commandments for one. But how? How do we stop causing offense? How do we love our neighbour? How do we deal with our enemies? How on earth do I pray for someone who is hateful to me? Will God help me?

I am going to stop here. Debates about evolution vs whatever are distractions. Avoid them. Focus on the important stuff. Focus on your relationship with the LORD. Being guided by Him by the Spirit of God is a beautiful thing. It is humbling and at the same time confidence building. Your faith will wane at times and you will be distraught but your trust will be restored and you will wonder why you ever doubted. This cycle of learning to trust Him, getting pruned back and so on, will serve to strengthen you greatly spiritually. Persevering through trials and seeking His hand through them is essential in the walk of a Christian.

Seek Him first.

[Gauge]

I get what you're saying, and I appreciate the viewpoint I was actually going to bring those miracles up myself if you didn't, because I do believe Jesus did the impossible with them haha. I also think that may be the point upon which any disagreement we have would hinge; you don't believe God ever bends or breaks the laws of nature, whereas I don't see him as being constrained by such. I also don't think science breaks down just because God (theoretically) might decide to change the rules, if he hypothetically wanted to; science as we know it comes from our current understanding of things, which is not as perfect as God is; how else would we explain the Sun not going down in Joshua 10, for example, unless we just don't believe that story's validity either? Or Moses' staff turning into a serpent, or other phenomena that can't be explained by science, even today?

Side note, if I'm not mistaken, the original Hebrew words in Genesis refer to 24 hour days literally, and never otherwise, although I'd welcome a different viewpoint/evidence on the matter? I think the word Moses used when writing was "yom," which always refers to 24 hour, "normal" days in the Bible.

However, I do respectfully disagree that science is "deceiving us" at every turn. We never have all the knowledge of the universe in our grasp; look at all the theories that get proven wrong every few decades as we try to learn more! We aren't the authority of understanding in the universe, we are just trying to learn more about it, and in the grand scheme of things, we have only just begun; things we think we know right now will get disproven 10 or 20 years from now, just like a lot of beliefs that the RCC forced upon people centuries ago have been disproven by science as well, just to name an example. Acting as if we have finally stumbled upon the most complete form of understanding we can have on all of these subjects, especially where we believe our understanding contradicts what the Bible says plainly, would be to fall victim to our own pride, I believe.

Also, going back to talking about the deception and such, God wouldn't be the one deceiving us; he literally told us in Genesis everything we need to know about how he created the world. We know he made man and woman fully formed, and we can also pretty much assume that animals were made fully formed as well, due to things that are said about them in the first few chapters. We can also know that trees were made as trees and not as seeds, and that they must have been fully-grown enough to ensure that the proper oxygen/CO2 levels were present in the atmosphere for man's survival. There's probably more that I can't think of atm or won't go into detail on, but every sign we have can be explained by the idea that God created everything on this earth, dropped it here, and then accelerated it all until all necessary forces/habitats/biomes/etc. were leveled out to function perfectly in harmony with humanity and general nature. I believe that, if God wanted to drop a bunch of animals here on the days he created them, and then rotate the earth/solar system super fast like Superman so that he fast forwards everything 10000s of years, he could do it, and it wouldn't shake my faith any at all. Just my perspective on it though; I agree that we aren't ultimately told how God manufactured it, just that he did; my bottom line is that I don't think he has been deceptive in the least by telling us only the things we need to know to get us started; we're the ones who have gone looking for other truths about the origin of this universe, even in spite of our original knowledge that God was creating it here for us at the beginning

In any case though, I do appreciate the discussion, and agree 100% with your entire last paragraph

[jimwalton]

> you don't believe God ever bends or breaks the laws of nature,

I didn't say this. We really don't know much about the nature of miracles or how they work. We know some miracles are an issue of timing, not breaking the rules of nature. For instance, Jericho is on an earthquake fault line. It's nothing unnatural at all that Jericho experiences earthquakes. Several earthquakes through the millennia have decimated the city. But an earthquake came just as the Israelites blew the last trumpet. Miracle? Of course? Against the laws of nature? Not at all.

> whereas I don't see him as being constrained by such.

I don't see God constrained by the laws of nature, either. We're just exactly sure how miracles work. Some speculate that on the quantum level, miracles are not a violation of the laws of nature at all, just a specific way of using them. It's pretty tough to know, if not impossible.

> I also don't think science breaks down just because God (theoretically) might decide to change the rules,

I agree, but if God is continually breaking the rules, then the rules become meaningless. And we know the rules aren't meaningless, because science is grounded in them, and we know that order, regularity, and predictability are valid.

> how else would we explain the Sun not going down in Joshua 10

What is going on in Joshua 10 is not a miracle of timing (in a similar sense to Jericho) as much as it is an omen. VERY briefly (and I emphasize VERY, because what I say will be not thorough enough to answer all your questions), what the text actually describes is an omen where the sun and moon are in the sky at the same time, Josh. 10.12 (a rare occurrence during a full moon, where the moon has not quite set when the sun rises. it's called "opposition"). It would have been a disastrous omen to the Amorites (and meaningless to the Yahwist Israelites). When the moon and sun "wait" or "stand," it indicates the presence of the lunar/solar opposition for the determination of the full moon day. The Lord used the perfect (miraculous) timing of a natural phenomenon to accomplish His purpose, defeat their morale, and so also defeat their armies. I know this is too brief; we'll have to discuss it separately if you want to pursue it.

> Moses's staff

Yes, a miracle. The "natural" explanations for it (some snakes become rigid when picked up in certain ways) are inadequate. We possess both ancient and modern reports of magicians who make snakes rigid as rods. There are ample parallels, too, for the sanguification of water. But God is not presenting Moses as a mere conjurer. The issue at stake was not fraud vs. real, but a genuine conflict of spiritual power, not a magic show. What Moses is doing is qualitatively different from what the Egyptian magicians are doing. Moses was performing a miracle.

> Side note, if I'm not mistaken, the original Hebrew words in Genesis refer to 24 hour days literally, and never otherwise, although I'd welcome a different viewpoint/evidence on the matter?

You're correct that they refer to 24-hour days. YECs take them to mean 24-hr days of material manufacture. But if the text is a temple text, as John Walton and I are proposing, and we know that temple dedication ceremonies in the ancient Near East were always 7-day ceremonies, in that case each 24-hour day was a separate day of dedication, worship, and celebration, just as we see in 1 Ki. 8.65: 7 literal 24-hr days.

> However, I do respectfully disagree that science is "deceiving us" at every turn. We never have all the knowledge of the universe in our grasp; look at all the theories that get proven wrong every few decades as we try to learn more!

Our lack of understand and growing grasp of the natural world through science is a very different thing than God making a rock that looks to be 10 million years old when it is really 10 minutes old, a tree that appears to be 50 when it's 5 minutes, and an expanding universe complete with electromagnetic radiation, the atomic spectra, hydrogen emissions and the like ALL giving us false information. What you are saying is not just that we're still learning, but that these multiple, almost infinite, number of factors in the universe are showing us a false picture (since they all show us a world and universe older than, say, 8000 years). None of it can ultimately be trusted. That's a different matter than, "We are still learning."

> God wouldn't be the one deceiving us; he literally told us in Genesis everything we need to know about how he created the world.

That's correct, but maybe, just maybe, Genesis 1 is not about material manufacture, but rather about how God has ordered the cosmos to function as his temple (Isa. 66.1) because no man-made temple is adequate for Him (Acts 17.24). Maybe, just maybe, Genesis 1 is about God glorifying Himself with a temple suited for His Name, about His presence with His people—the exact same themes that are common throughout the entire Bible, even to the end of Revelation.

> We know he made man and woman fully formed

if Genesis 1-2 are about God ordering the cosmos to function as His temple, then Gn. 2 is not about material manufacture, either. "Forming from dust" is an indicator that that humans were manufactured from soil, but that we are by nature mortal (Gn. 3.19; Ps. 103.14; 1 Cor. 15.47). Yet despite our inherent mortality, God has given us the function of co-regent with Him upon the Earth (Gn. 1.28), and ordained us as priests and priestesses in creation (Gn. 2.15; "work it" and "care for it" are priestly terms). So maybe, just maybe, it's not about material manufacture, but WHY WE ARE HERE: To rule the Earth and subdue it as partners with God, and to mediate and represent His presence here. Maybe, just maybe the text is not about man and woman being fully formed but rather about them being fully functional as God's image.

> We can also know that trees were made as trees and not as seeds

You know, the text doesn't say this. Gn. 1.11 says, "Let the land produce vegetation...and it was so. How did the land "produce" them? The text doesn't say God manufactured them as full-grown trees and not as seeds. Then 1.12 says that the land indeed produced vegetation. So did it produce them gradually or instantly? It doesn't say. Is a gradual process a possibility? Of course.

> if God wanted to drop a bunch of animals here on the days he created them, and then rotate the earth/solar system super fast like Superman so that he fast forwards everything 10000s of years, he could do it,

Of course He could do it, but did He? The text doesn't require it. If Walton is correct (and I think he is), then the text is about function, not manufacture, and we can see, based on my previous posts on this topic, that is a literal interpretation of the text, and in that case the text doesn't tell us how long it took or what mechanisms God used.