[__ Science __ ] Evolution Is a Scientific Law?

[Barbarian]

Then why do you frequently say "Genesis is allegory"

I don't. Genesis includes literal history, as well as allegory.

It's not just Christians who understand this. Jewish theologians have always known this:
In the Middle Ages, Saadia Gaon argued that a biblical passage should not be interpreted literally if that made a passage mean something contrary to the senses or reason (or, as we would say, science; Emunot ve-Deot, chapter 7). Maimonides applied this principle to theories about creation. He held that if the eternity of the universe (what we would call the Steady State theory) could be proven by logic (science) then the biblical passages speaking about creation at a point in time could and should be interpreted figuratively in a way that is compatible with the eternity of the universe.

It is only because the eternity of the universe has not been proven that he interpreted the verses about creation at a point in time literally (Guide, II, 25), but he still insisted that the creation story as a whole was written metaphorically (Book I, Introduction).

To Saadia and Maimonides, belief in the truth of the Bible does not require a denial of science ("reason," "logic") when the two seem to conflict. These philosophers imply that questions of science should be left to scientists and scientific method. In fact, Maimonides quotes a passage in the

in which Jewish scholars abandoned an astronomical theory of their own in favor of a theory of gentile scholars (Pesahim 94b).

Maimonides approved of their action, saying that "speculative matters everyone treats according to the results of his own study, and everyone accepts that which appears to him established by proof" (Guide, II, 8). To him, clearly, Science is a matter of speculation and is not the field in which the Bible seeks to be decisive.

Genesis As Allegory | My Jewish Learning

Genesis as Allegory. Creationism and Evolution in Judaism. Science and Judaism. Jewish Science. Jewish Ideas and Beliefs

www.myjewishlearning.com

 

[KV-44-v1]

Actually, God created nature to do exactly what it does.

Yes, which is why you cannot attribute the formation of new animals to God.

Its like when you wind up a car and let it go. You are not pushing it, its going off the force you gave it.

God is not playing a direct role in creating animals like He did in Genesis.

 

[KV-44-v1]

He held that if the eternity of the universe (what we would call the Steady State theory) could be proven by logic (science) then the biblical passages speaking about creation at a point in time could and should be interpreted figuratively in a way that is compatible with the eternity of the universe

Yup. Changing the Scriptures to fit mans fallible beliefs and findings. The very thing you accuse YEC of.

 

[Barbarian]

Actually, God created nature to do exactly what it does.

Yes, which is why you cannot attribute the formation of new animals to God.

You have it backwards. That's what it does. God made it to do so. New kinds of animals evolve from time to time. Speciation is a fact.

Its like when you wind up a car and let it go. You are not pushing it, its going off the force you gave it.

You're advocating deism, not Christianity. God didn't wind up the universe and walk away. None of it would even exist if He took His attention away from it.

God is not playing a direct role in creating animals like He did in Genesis.

God is always taking a direct role in creation.

Yup. Changing the Scriptures to fit mans fallible beliefs and findings.

No. It's changing man's fallible interpretations of scripture to fit God's creation. YE does it backwards, insisting that their fallible interpretations of scripture stand against the reality of God's creation. You've assumed you're infallible, and that reality must conform to your thinking.

 

[KV-44-v1]

You have it backwards. That's what it does. God made it to do so. New kinds of animals evolve from time to time. Speciation is a fact.

Now you have confused kinds with species again.

Where does the phrase "you have it backwards" come into play?

You're advocating deism, not Christianity.

Ok i admit the analogy has a flaw. Sometimes the Winder does things to the wind up car.

God is always taking a direct role in creation

What does this mean? If someone murders, did "God make them do it"?

It's changing man's fallible interpretations of scripture to fit God's creation

If all view of Scripture is fallible we cannot even be sure that God exists. Mabye He is just an allegory for smth else.

reality of God's creation

Under your worldview we can not be sure of God's creation from the Bible, but need to guess and guess.

"Mabye theres an allegory here and an allegory there, not real verifiable history!"

You've assumed you're infallible, and that reality must conform to your thinking

That more accurately describes the athiestic "evolution scientists" (as opposed to Thiestic ones) who intepret everything thru their worldview lens. No room for Genesis, must belieeeve Darwin instead.

 

[KV-44-v1]

If they did that would be contrary to God's way of creating things. Even knowledgeable YECs admit that the evidence shows that simple organisms were first brought forth from the Earth.

Now who is confusing abiogenesis with K2K evo?

According to engineers, design

UNTRUE!! It took less time for humans to come up with designs for lightbulbs than it supposedly took for bird pops to turn into dinoes!
So you think man is faster than God at making things?

Clearly God's designs involved no "processes" when He made the 1st creatures.

You do believe that God used "processes" to make the 1st creatures, yes?

 

[KV-44-v1]

https://media.scored.co/scale/u4cITKIwtdoFPHef.png

 

[Barbarian]

(Confuses evolution with cows popping out of the earth)

If they did that would be contrary to God's way of creating things. Even knowledgeable YECs admit that the evidence shows that simple organisms were first brought forth from the Earth.

Now who is confusing abiogenesis with K2K evo?

Seems like you are. But perhaps your K2K theory includes abiogenesis with evolution. I have no idea. I'm just pointing out the fact. Did you not know that the origin of life is not part of evolutionary theory?

According to engineers, evlutionary processes are more efficient than design for very complex problems.

UNTRUE!!

Well, let's take a look...

Genetic Algorithms Optimization of Diesel Engine Emissions and Fuel Efficiency with Air Swirl, EGR,Injection Timing and Multiple Injections

The present study extends the recently developed HIDECS-GA computer code to optimize diesel engine emissions and fuel economy with the existing techniques, such as exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) and multiple injections.A computational model of diesel engines named HIDECS is incorporated with the ge

www.sae.org

Reality beats anyone's opinion.

It took less time for humans to come up with designs for lightbulbs

If you think a lightbulb is "extremely complex", we've located the problem.

han it supposedly took for bird pops to turn into dinoes!

And since you think God is time-limited, I can see why you'd think so. But He isn't.

So you think man is faster than God at making things?

Lots of people are faster than I am at doing various things, but they don't do them as well. You're still judging God by man's standards.

Clearly God's designs involved no "processes"

The earth bringing forth living things is a physical process. You just don't like the way He did it.

The way God provided for populations of animals to survive and live in changing environments is a process. The way God provided for new kinds of organisms to evolve from other kinds is a process. Why not just accept it His way?

 

[Barbarian]

You have it backwards. That's what it does. God made it to do so. New kinds of animals evolve from time to time. Speciation is a fact.

Now you have confused kinds with species again.

A species is a kind of animal. I know YE have invented their own definition of "kind", but since you can't even give us a testable definition of this new belief, it's pointless to even discuss it.

Its like when you wind up a car and let it go. You are not pushing it, its going off the force you gave it.

You're advocating deism, not Christianity.

Ok i admit the analogy has a flaw. Sometimes the Winder does things to the wind up car.

Occasional deism is also wrong. God did not wind up anything and walk away. He remains completely involved in every particle of the universe.

God is always taking a direct role in creation

What does this mean?

It means that nothing exists apart from His attention to it.

If someone murders, did "God make them do it"?

Since God has given us the ability to know right and wrong, we are moral agents and responsible for our actions. The question of how consciousness and choice can exist in a physical universe is difficult. You want to talk about that?

It's changing man's fallible interpretations of scripture to fit God's creation

If all view of Scripture is fallible we cannot even be sure that God exists.

Faith is a gift of grace. God not only speaks to us, he also gives us the grace to respond. To believe in Revelation we need the gift of faith. It's not an intellectual confirmation.

Under your worldview we can not be sure of God's creation from the Bible, but need to guess and guess.

Have some faith in faith. It's not just scripture, either. God speaks to you directly, if you bother to listen. And creation itself tells you.

Romans 1:20 For the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; his eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable.

You've assumed you're infallible, and that reality must conform to your thinking

That more accurately describes the athiestic "evolution scientists"

I'm not saying that you are like atheists. You've just assumed you are infallible in interpreting scripture.

No room for Genesis, must belieeeve Darwin instead.

Turns out, there's no conflict between the two. Only between some people's interpretations of Genesis and the reality of evolution.

 

[Little Owl]

Dissecting the claim that evolution is more than a theory.

Continue reading...

No,it is a theory.

The field of Physics is finding their former laws
are not what they thought.

 

[Barbarian]

No,it is a theory.

It is an observed phenomenon, there is a theory that explains it. Evolution is a change in allele frequency in a population over time. Or as Darwin put it, "descent with modification." That's evolution, and we see it going on constantly.

Evolutionary theory explain why this tends to lead to increased fitness of the individuals in the population, and often results in new kinds of organisms.

The field of Physics is finding their former laws
are not what they thought.

Laws are not as certain as theories. Laws predict what scientists expect to see under specific circumstances. Theories also predict things but in addition, they explain what is seen.

For example, Newton's laws of motion predict what we will see in moving objects, but do not explain why. Newton's theory of gravitation predicts movement of physical objects but also explains why they move as they do.

Newton's laws of motion and Newton's theory of gravitation are still valid. They have been refined to account for relativistic effects of high velocities. NASA still uses Newton's theory of gravitation to plot movement of objects in the solar system, but sometimes a relativistic correction is necessary. Most theories are like this. Darwin's theory was first modified (and strengthened; it cleared up a major problem for his theory) by genetics.

 

[Consecrated Life]

Genesis includes literal history, as well as allegory.

I have never heard a differing Christain account of Adam & Eve's creation.
Is it the historical belief of Christian evolutionists that Adam & Eve were born as infants ?

 

[Barbarian]

I have never heard a differing Christain account of Adam & Eve's creation.

Some Christians think Adam was poofed from the ground. More of them accept that he was the first human to be given a living soul. Why would it matter how God used nature to make his body?

People who dither about this, are missing the whole point of Genesis.

Is it the historical belief of Christian evolutionists that Adam & Eve were born as infants ?

Orthodox Christians:
To answer questions of this kind, the author of Genesis 2-3 allowed himself to be inspired and guided by the Holy Spirit, to create the profound and beautiful story of Adam and Eve. To interpret that story correctly, we need to read it allegorically, symbolically. We need to look beyond any particular historical event (Paradise, after all, is trans-historical, beyond time and space, as witnessed by Jesus’ word to the “Good Thief”), in order to perceive in the midst of early human history the presence and activity of God, who is the Creator and Sustainer of all that exists.

On Reading the Story of Adam and Eve

Someone asked the other day how we should read Genesis 2-3, the story of Adam and Eve. Behind his question lay troubled concern over the apparent conflict between science and Scripture. “If we take the biblical account seriously,” he concluded, “then we have to reject evolutionary theory...

www.oca.org

Roman Catholics:
Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism. Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution. While the story of human origins is complex and subject to revision, physical anthropology and molecular biology combine to make a convincing case for the origin of the human species in Africa about 150,000 years ago in a humanoid population of common genetic lineage. However it is to be explained, the decisive factor in human origins was a continually increasing brain size, culminating in that of homo sapiens. With the development of the human brain, the nature and rate of evolution were permanently altered: with the introduction of the uniquely human factors of consciousness, intentionality, freedom and creativity, biological evolution was recast as social and cultural evolution.

Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God

In neither of these Churches, which comprise the majority of the world's Christians, is any particular interpretation considered to be essential doctrine; one can dissent from these teachings, and remain a Christian.
Church of England:
In his essay, Brown traces his church’s opposition to many of Darwin’s principles and attempts to explain them. He also warns against the “social misapplication” of Darwin’s theories about survival of the fittest, which he says have been used to justify racism, other forms of discrimination, and “material self-interest.”

But the church official’s main point seems to be that evolutionary theory and religion are compatible, and that accepting faith does not mean rejecting science—or vice versa.

“For the sake of human integrity—and thus for the sake of good Christian living—some rapprochement between Darwin and Christian faith is essential,” Brown writes.

“Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science—and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.”

Church of England to Darwin: We're Sorry

The Church of England, the Anglican denomination that dates to the 16th century, has issued an apology of sorts to Charles Darwin, the British naturalist famous for having advanced the theory of evolution.

www.edweek.org

Among mainline Protestants, no denomination has a majority saying that humans have not evolved:

Religious Landscape Study

Explore the geographic distribution and demographics of America's major religious groups.

www.pewresearch.org

 

[Consecrated Life]

Some Christians think Adam was poofed from the ground. More of them accept that he was the first human to be given a living soul. Why would it matter how God used nature to make his body?

Well we know when the "poofed from the ground" crowd believes a soul was God breathed into him, because there is a Biblical text that references that.
The Christian "using nature believers" are then left with some opened ended spiritual questions to answer, among other things, at what point did God Breath a soul into the first naturally born human ?
I did not see anything you posted that specifically addressed that ?

 

[Vaccine]

Roman Catholics:
Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism.

I'm having a hard time understanding the use of the word "demonstrated". How exactly was the genetically relatedness of all living organisms demonstrated? Wouldn't extrapolated make more sense in that sentence?

 

[Barbarian]

I'm having a hard time understanding the use of the word "demonstrated". How exactly was the genetically relatedness of all living organisms demonstrated?

Genetics shows how genes change over time, and has verified that genetic relatedness indicates common descent. We can verify this by checking organisms of known descent.

Wouldn't extrapolated make more sense in that sentence?

It's like concluding that a certain person made the ascent on Half Dome four times, after watching him do it once, and looking at photos of his other climbs. "Extrapolation" is the extension of a graph, curve, or range of values by inferring unknown values from trends in the known data.

But given the data we have showing that this happened from fossil evidence, DNA, and observed evolution, it's much more certain than mere extrapolation.

 

[Barbarian]

Well we know when the "poofed from the ground" crowd believes a soul was God breathed into him, because there is a Biblical text that references that.

Yes. Our bodies are formed naturally, but God immediately gives a living soul to each of us supernaturally. Like Adam.

The Christian "using nature believers" are then left with some opened ended spiritual questions to answer, among other things, at what point did God Breath a soul into the first naturally born human ?

My belief is that it happens at conception. It makes sense, but of course, no scientific data is available for such a thing.

I did not see anything you posted that specifically addressed that ?

Because it's not something specifically said in scripture, although I find this significant:

Jeremiah 1:5 Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee: and before thou camest forth out of the womb, I sanctified thee, and made thee a prophet unto the nations.

 

[Consecrated Life]

The Christian "using nature believers" are then left with some opened ended spiritual questions to answer, among other things, at what point did God Breath a soul into the first naturally born human ?
I did not see anything you posted that specifically addressed that ?

Because it's not something specifically said in scripture......

There is no mention Adam being "naturally born" in scripture either ?
The did not encumber the Christain "naturally born" crowd at all from making and embracing the claim .
The fact that there arises numerous key spiritual invalidations in God's Word from the Christain standpoint in making the claim of natural birth that need to be delt with from a Christian standpoint was the point of my question after all .
In example going forward in the first God breathed soul by "natural Birth " of Adam theology , that would mean that by definition the parents of Adam were Soulless creatures correct ?

 

[Barbarian]

There is no mention Adam being "naturally born" in scripture either ?

Only that he was made from the Earth as God says other animals were.

The did not encumber the Christain "naturally born" crowd at all from making and embracing the claim .

The earth is natural, after all. God uses natural means for most everything in this world. Why not? That's what He created things for.

The fact that there arises numerous key spiritual invalidations in God's Word from the Christain standpoint in making the claim of natural birth that need to be delt with from a Christian standpoint was the point of my question after all .
In example going forward in the first God breathed soul by "natural Birth " of Adam theology , that would mean that by definition the parents of Adam were Soulless creatures correct ?

All animals have souls. They don't have the immortal souls God gave to humans, starting with Adam and Eve. At least scripture gives us no such indication. I'd be delighted if my animal friends were waiting for me, when I arrive, but we just can't say. The big issue is that from Adam and Eve on, their descendants were like God, knowing good and evil.

 

[Consecrated Life]

There is no mention Adam being "naturally born" in scripture either ?

Only that he was made from the Earth as God says other animals were.

By "naturally born" I was referring the evolutionary Christian theology you first cited, being born by natural evolution as an infant from a male and female parents.
The method of a full grown Adam being crafted from soil would be more accurately be described as being Supernaturally Born.
Agreed?
So clearing that up let me rephrase

Well we know when the "poofed from the ground" crowd believes a soul was God breathed into him, because there is a Biblical text that references that.
The Christian "using natural evolution believers" are then left with some opened ended spiritual questions to answer, among other things, at what point did God Breath a soul into the first naturally born human ?
I did not see anything you posted that specifically addressed that ?

Because it's not something specifically said in scripture, although I find this significant:

There is no mention Adam being "naturally born" in scripture either ?
Just that he was Supernaturally formed "poof" style from dirt.
The did not encumber the Christain "naturally born" crowd at all from making and embracing the claim .
The fact that there arises numerous key spiritual invalidations in God's Word from the Christain standpoint in making the claim of natural birth that need to be delt with from a Christian standpoint was the point of my question after all .
In example going forward in the first God breathed soul by "natural Birth " of Adam theology , that would mean that by definition the parents of Adam were Soulless creatures correct ?