http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-dudley/christian-faith-requires-_b_876345.html

I recently came across this article on another forum site, and it sparked a huge argument that even got into the Genesis account of creation itself. So would we do a service by accepting modern scientific theory of creation? Any thoughts on this in general would help.

What if adam and eve were monkeys? But God created us in his image so God could of at one point been a monkey. But evolved into a man like us. That's the way I always thought of it.

zeldafreak123 : i dont think most christians would accept the idea of god being an ape.
The problem with evolution and religion is they dont go together.the bible is pretty clear as to the christian idea of origin.

Alright Hoochman. Tell me. Which is right? Science or God? I would like to combine both. Science has good points and the bible has good points. What if God was one and evolved just like us? Any question of life can be true. None of it is really a proven fact. But I do believe in both yes and thats how I believe. I am entitled to my own opinion. I mean after all he did create us in his own image. And we share 90 some percent of apes DNA. So can you explain that one to me. Was apes our rejects? Do we have rejects? Then how do they share that DNA with them. Somebody please explain. I'm very confused. =/

zeldafreak123 : well i believe purely in science,its a common misconception that were evolved from these monkeys.the theory states we are the same family,like all dogs,but one type/breed evolved massively(all animals evolve but very gradualy,big evolutions give new creatures entirely.)in other words,all apes,including us have a common ancestor,but our ancestors arent living apes,they are as distant cousins.one of there relatives was our ancestor.they call this the missing link.
This would be a type of ape that stood straighter.its children would stand taller still.its childrends children would use primitive but increased logic etc etc.
As yet they have found far smaller and curved humans but not the missing link itself.(thus it being called the MISSING link)

Ah ok. Well all I know is that school taught me that we evolved from monkeys and the bible taught me that Adam and Eve are our ancestors. It's very confusing. I don't know which one to believe. =/ 

zeldafreak123 : Well, you see I and most creationists would tell you that I would combine science and the Bible but reject evolution. Now most atheist who see that last comment are gonna say: "Evolution is science dummy". The point is, is that you cannot take evolution and insert it into the creation account of Genesis. This is my main problem with the article, by accepting science aka evolution, you are undermining a key component of scripture.

The way I see it is if you believe in God then evolution is impossible. Those who come to God must believe that he is. To combine evolution with God is limiting him, if he wanted to create everything by evolution, then he could have, but he wouldn't have the need to.

The way I see it, the Scientific theory of Evolution and religion/God are not incompatible. Evolution does not disprove or prove whether or not God created life. Why do people have to take Genesis so literally? Do you take everything in the Bible completely literally?

If God created life, then Evolution would simply be our way of explaining his plan for life on this planet.

The key here is the Christian faith. Do we accept it? Can we do it without undermining the Bible. Some things in the Bible we take literal, some we don't.

tRIUNE : Anyway I thought you raised a most interesting point. God and evolution together is simply impossible. Evolution is a process of nature that takes place over millions of years. As Christians that doesn't seem compatible at all unless I'm missing the boat on something.

Ah, the topic of evolution and Biblical creation.  I personally believe they can coexist.  Hopefully, in my extensive use of common blabber, I might be able to explain why I believe so.

According to scientific theory, the material world that we know formed before single-celled organisms.  Then, came sea creatures, which then evolved and went on land.  Don't know how that happened, but we know that creatures occurred in the sea before they occurred on land according to the fossil record.  How on earth the ones that decided to grow lungs did so while others didn't is beyond me.  (Please let me know if I'm skewing this theory).  Then we get these things called dinosaurs and then mammals, and eventually these things called human beings, which apparently evolved from apes.

Back to Biblical creation.  God created the earth, the material world first.  Then He filled the world with sea creatures on the fifth "day" and land creatures, including humans, on the sixth.  In any case, you still have this relative time line of material world, sea creatures, land creatures.  Now, the Bible doesn't mention anything about evolution because back then, people didn't know what it was and perhaps that was fine with them.  If we brought this science back in time to them, I wonder if they would find the idea absolutely preposterous.

So, we have this similarity in relative time, but we cannot be sure.  God breathed life into Adam in the beginning.  Is that where we received this capability to reason, to discern between right and wrong, to choose what we seem to be correct?  Where did we receive this knowledge from?  From evolution itself?  Then how come my dog doesn't decide, so to speak, to go for a walk consciously instead of going for one because he has the instinct to do so?  From Adam and Eve, we get Caucasians, Aboriginals, Chinese, Indians, Africans, and other races of humans that are quite distinct from each other in appearance.  Yet we humans are quite different than monkeys.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on the matter.  Clearly, humanity is separated from the animal kingdom, such that we have some purpose to accomplish here, as if that purpose came from Someone with an ultimate plan for the orderly universe.

Japxican : humans have the least level of diversity across our entire species than any other animal

Annette : "The way I see it, the Scientific theory of Evolution and religion/God are not incompatible. Evolution does not disprove or prove whether or not God created life. Why do people have to take Genesis so literally? Do you take everything in the Bible completely literally?"

You are right they arn't incompatible, but I would say evloution and Christian fundamentalism is incompatible. There are Christians who believe in evolution , because they acknowledge the evidence and see it to be true, thus they are not entirely incompatible. On the other hand a fundementalist wouldn't believe the evidence if it punched them in the face because it goes against what  the bible teaches.( I realize I am generalizing here, and a fundementalist could believe in evolution, it just wouldn't make much sense) I should say that there are thousands of different deffinitions of being a Christian, and it basically changes from person to person. I forget who said this quote but I think it is very fitting to what I just said, "The last Christian died on the cross".

The bible is supposedly the "word of god " as dictated  through people such as Moses, who is said to have written the first 5 books of the bible/torah) and other prophets. You are supposed to take the bible literally like it was  for thousands of years, it has only been fairly recently (the end of the dark ages) when science has emerged and given new insight and knowledge on just about every subject.Many people don't take everything in the bible literaly, but this goes against it being the "word of god" .

Why would God tell Moses a made up creation story to be not taken literally when he could have just told him something closer to the truth.

The obvious answer, in my opinion,  is that the bible isn't the word of God, and it is just ancient uneducated(by our standards)mans interpretation of the world they lived in.  I personally don't think evolution and a traditional view of Christianity are compatible with each other. There is no room in evolution for a Creator too exist, alteast not in the biblical sense, although a pantheist belief has the possibility of being true.

Hoochman : "The key here is the Christian faith. Do we accept it? Can we do it without undermining the Bible. Some things in the Bible we take literal, some we don't. "

This relates greatly to what I was replying to Annette about. Some people take everything in the bible completely literally on faith alone , despite evidence that contradicts what it says. Other people may select certain aspects of the bible that they don't see to be correct , ususally due to scientific evidence or their own morals. This isn't exclusive to one sect or group of Christianity and different views are held by people within a certain sect.

The main problem I see with this is anyone can pick and choose what is true or not about their religion. I don't understand how someone can come to the conclusion that parts of the bible are not literal or untrue, yet still have faith that the bible is God's word or has any amount of divinity to it. I will give you an example to show you what I mean. Lets say that the Genesis creation story isn't taken literally aswell as the story of Adam and Eve. The talking snake who gets Adam to give an inheritence of sin to humankind by eating a forbidden fruit is also not taken literaly ( in this case is what I mean, people can believe what they want too). If  this story isn't taken literaly or thought to be untrue than it completely disestablishes prominent aspects of the entire religion. If mankind doesn't have original sin or hasn't "fallen" like the story says, than there is no need for a person such as Jesus to sacrafice himself for our sins. Likewise there would be no need for the animal sacrifices that the ancient Jews practiced as commanded by God.

Basically what I am trying to say is that if a part of the bible isn't taken literaly, it makes the entire book doubtful of being dictated by God. And If certain parts of the bible arn't taken literaly it makes parts of the religion unneccessary.  Again this goes back to what I was saying to Annette, the bible is supposed to be taken literaly.


Japxican : First I should say that I understand everyong is entitled to their own opinions, thoughts and beliefs.You seem more opened minded than a lot of religious people so I give you credit for that Also you weren't entirely wrong with your view of the evolution theory, but it was quite simplifed. The part that you were wrong on was when you said "How on earth the ones that decided to grow lungs did so while others didn't is beyond me." . Evolution isn't a decision an animal or species makes, it is a process which usually takes a long period of time and has nothing to do with deciding to change. In the cases that it is a faster process, it it caused by drastic changes in a species environment which require it to adapt to survive. When I say "faster" process it still is a process that takes many generations but it takes thousands or tens of thousands of years instead of millions of years.

I will give you an analogy to show how evolution works over a large period of time. Spanish and Italian are both languages that are based off of the Latin language. This transition from two populatioins speaking Latin to Spanish/ Italian took many generations to fully happen. What I mean is there were  people in Spain who spoke Latin but there dialect began to change. Lets say the first generation used 5 "spanish" words, then the second generation used "10" words, the third "20" word, etc. Basically they were speaking Latin but slowly gaining Spanish words, until after many generations they weren't speaking any Latin but instead were speaking Spanish. The same thing can be said about Italian. The differences between Spanish and Italian are due to the two populations of Spain and Italy being regionally seperate. Latin people in Spain and Italy didn't wake up one morning and decide to speak Spanish / Italian.

Now I understand that this is linguistics and not biology, but it is very similar to the process of evolution. The major difference being one is a mental change while the other is a physical change. Evolution happens over a long period of time and involves minor changes from generation to generation, with the end result (althought 'end' is a horrible word to use in an evolution topic haha) being something that is entirely different than the first generation. Also, like the differences between Spanish and Italian, differences in species with common ancestors is due to similar reasons I.E they are physically seperate. This explains how humans are different than monkeys. A common misconception found in the views of creationists is that humans evolved from monekys, but evidence shows that we have  common ancestors. That doesn't mean that a species of proto-humans ( sorry not sure the exact latin term that it would be called) had one child that was a human and another that was a monkey. It means that we originated from the same species.

"In any case, you still have this relative time line of material world, sea creatures, land creatures."
You are trying to compare apples and oranges. The Gensis narrative of creation differs from science in many ways. The bible says that God took a week to create the earth and everything that revolves around earth, but there isn't any evidence that this is how it happened. Sure there are plenty of Christians that don't take Genesis literaly and say something like " a day for god could be thousands of years" but that doesn't really make any sense. According to Genesis, God created plants the day before he created the sun, so if he waited thousands of years between the two creations ,the plants would have died. Maybe he just forgot plants need sun light to survive? I could talk about other things such as the sun being created after earth in the bible but I won't, I just hope people understand that there is a difference between what science says and what  is in the bible.

"Now, the Bible doesn't mention anything about evolution because back then, people didn't know what it was and perhaps that was fine with them."
You are right, people didn't know what evolution was back then so it would have been impossible for them to write about it... unless God told them. There are really only two possibilites regarding the origin of the Biblical creation story. The first being that God told someone about it, since no one was around to witness it. The second possibility is that ancient man made the story up. I believe the second option is true, because of exactly what you said about evolution being absent in the story.  As you said, the bible is written with knowledge they had in ancient times and not our modern knowledge, but there is absolutely no reason why God couldn't have told someone that the earth was around for billions of years and humans evolved from the simplest organisms.

"From Adam and Eve, we get Caucasians, Aboriginals, Chinese, Indians, Africans, and other races of humans that are quite distinct from each other in appearance.  Yet we humans are quite different than monkeys."
I am not exactly sure if I understand your viewpoint on this. You believe different races of humans have evolved from Adam and Eve but have a hard time believing we evolved from the same species that monkeys did? If I am wrong about that then let me know! To put it simply we look different from monkeys because we are different species, yet we look similar to other races because we are all part of the human species. I should point out that monkey is a rather broad term that covers over 200 different species of primates. Also race means " distinct genetically divergent populations within the same species with relatively small morphological and genetic differences." as read off of the wikipedia page for Race (biology).

Clearly, humanity is separated from the animal kingdom, such that we have some purpose to accomplish here, as if that purpose came from Someone with an ultimate plan for the orderly universe.

I don't think it is very clear that humanity is seperate from the animal kingdom, especially considering the scientific classification of Homo sapien puts us in the animalia kingdom. What exactly is the purpose of life? I have never felt there was a meaning to life other than to live and reproduce so your species can continue to live.



To sum up my views of evolution being a part of Christianity. I think it is possible for the two ideas to coexist, but just not in any way that makes sense. In a traditional or orthodox Christian religion , evolution goes against what the bible teaches. Honestly, if they were compatable with each other I don't think we would need to discuss this.

smotpoker86 : No, you don't take all of it literally, some of it is poetic, some of it is symbolic, and some of it is literal history.  Each book has an individual meaning to it, with an individual purpose. Evolution simply doesn't fit.

Hoochman : You might not take all of it literaly, but some people do . When I was saying you are supposed to take it literaly, I basically meant in ancient times when it was written, they took symbolic parts of it literally. As an Atheist, I take some of the history literaly but just don't associate it with God. We agree for the most part that evolution doesn't fit well with the bible, especially if the creation story is taken literally.

I believe in Genesis as a literal account of creation the Bible doesn't give any hint as it being a story or fable or parable. Evolution and true Christianity can't co-mingle because the bible said Adam and Eve's sin brought death into the world but with evolution death brought about Adam and Eve. The whole reason Jesus died for us was to save us from that. If death came first the bible is a liar and there was no reason for Christ to have died on the cross. Evolution is also a theory there is no real concrete proof for it and not all scientist believe it. Science is not evolution some scientist came up with that theory so yes science itself can be mingled with Christianity but not evolution in my opinion.

Those saying that maybe God was at one point an ape, the Bible CLEARLY states God was never changed and never will change. And since God does not need time, evolution for Him is absurd.

Malachi 3:6
For I am the Lord, I do not change.

Hebrews 13:8
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Yup, just wanted to say that, for those who argue about Christianity without actually ever reading a Bible.

From what I've gathered about the Catholic viewpoint on creationism vs. evolution is that it is perfectly acceptable to believe in evolution; all scientific facts point to it. However, believing in evolution and keeping in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church, you must believe two things: that the universe was created out of nothing eg. was created by God, and that at one specific point in time we were given souls. In other words, there was never in evolution's history a point where there was a half soul or pseudo-soul. Once humans evolved, God gifted us with souls. You might say that the culmination of evolution was humanity in that we received souls.

kabenon007 : Exactly, God created humans as the final part of creation, he may very well have used the process of evolution to go from the very beginning to the last day, 'day being a relative term of course' then on that sixth day, he said, "Let us make man in our own image" then whether he took an ape and shaped it through evolution into a man, Adam, then granted him a soul, or made him separately, outside of the entire other cycle of evolution, either way evolution does not conflict with Genesis.

Theistic Evolution states that God used evolution as his tool in creation. God only intervenes at certain points of the evolutionary process. All the rest of it is random.

In Theistic evolution, God intervenes in these 3 ways:

1. The creation of the first matter

2. The creation of the simplest life-form

3. The creation of man.



Derek Kidner, an Old Testament Scholar who held to the theory of Theistic Evolution argued that Adam and Even were two primates out of millions with whom God entered into a covenant. God chose them to possess knowledge of God, rationality, and a conscious.



Problems with Theistic Evolution/Things to consider in light of this view:



1.Creation in the Bible is purposeful. Wayne Grudem writes: “The driving force of the development of new organisms according to the scripture is God’s intelligent design” This is tricky for any evolutionary theory, because evolution depends in part on randomness, not on purposefulness.



2. Once it is admitted that God intervenes at any point in the process of creation then your system seems to depend at points on intelligent design, not randomness. That poses problems for a system that depends upon randomness



3. God's creative word is immediate. See the book of Genesis chapters 1 and 2 for example. When God speaks, things happen, there is not a delay. There is no reason to think that God speaks and millions of years pass before anything happens.



4. scripture teaches that God created all different kinds of plants and animals from the beginning but theistic evolutionists must maintain that these things developed over millions of years from the simplest life forms.



5. God actively creating and sustaining all things is a core theme of scripture. This is true for people, grass. Birds, other creatures. Theistic evolution suggests a God that only intervened at certain points in history.



6. The creation of Adam and Eve – A literal reading of Genesis 1 and 2 forces theistic evolutionists to say that God intervenes to create them (and by the way Jesus himself quoted from Genesis 1 as it was historical fact. See Matt 19:4 for example) . This is very tricky. If God is carrying out this evolutionary plan, how are we to reconcile the creation of Adam and Eve, highly evolved beings from the very beginning?