Barbarian observes:
Man was also brought forth from the Earth, but God also directly gave him the breath of life, providing a living soul.
All animals, man and beast, are given the breath of life.
Man was different, according to God:
Genesis 2:7 And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
So our bodies, like those of other animals are of the earth, but we are given a soul directly by God.
Ecc 3:19 For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all [is] vanity.
The preacher is not arguing against the special nature of man. He is arguing that all is vanity "under the Sun." But he says we are to enjoy life while we are here, to serve God and do His commandments, and looks to a higher reality above the Sun. But the preacher who knows whether the spirit of man goes upward. He does not deny what is in Genesis, merely asks what happens to that spirit after death.
Barbarian observes:
It's what God says. I believe Him.
You believe what you want to.
No person, believes what he wants to. He believes what he believes. You might convince yourself you believe what you don't, but you're fooling yourself.
Here's a question. Since you believe in evolution.
I don't believe in evolution. I accept it so long as the evidence indicates it's true. Or are you using it in the sense of "I believe I'll have another Guinness?"
The Bible says that birds came before animals, reptiles specifically.
It says that bats are birds, too. Not much of a science textbook. As St. Augustine pointed out, the "days" of Genesis are categories of creation, and never meant to be literal days. Indeed, without a sun to have them, the idea of such days is absurd.
Yet evolution tells us that reptiles gave way to birds.
Yes. As you see, the Bible is often figurative, but science is always literal. You can't see the entire world from a tall mountain, as the Bible asserts. But that doesn't mean the Bible says the Earth is flat.
It's a problem only for those who try to get their science from the Bible, or their religion from science. For Christians there's no conflict.
Barbarian observes:
Which means YE creationism can't be true. But other forms of creationism would be consistent with His word.
The "life ex nihilo" doctine of YE creationism is directly contradicted by Genesis.
If both man and animal were formed on the 6th day then man certainly couldn't have evolved from other life forms.
But that's a problem only for those who want to revise Genesis into a literal history. Orthodox Christianity has no such problem.
Barbarian on the supposed requirement of DNA for life:
Retroviruses do nicely without it.
Have you seen a retrovirus driving a BMW lately?
Haven't seen a human use reverse transcriptase, either. Is there a point here?
(Barbarian on the misconception that evolutionary theory depends on some particular origin of life)
The assumption is that living things exist. But we have pretty good evidence for that. No faith required.
Even a two year old knows this isn't an assumption.
Maybe so. But that's as close as you'll find in evolutionary theory. Sorry.
Yeah, we can actually "see" other life forms. The assumption lies in proving how these life forms came about.
You might as well castigate chemistry for not saying how atoms came about. Theories are only accountable for the claims they make. Since evolutionary theory is indifferent to the way life began, (Darwin for example,seems to think God just created the first living things miraculously) it makes no difference.
Evolution can't. It can only assume.
Can't even assume. It's limited to describing how living things change, not how they come about. You've confused evolution with abiogenesis.
