Is evolution anti-Christian?

Originally posted by HandyAndy
You made my day, CJ. Thoughtful arguments and reasonable opinions are rare in these parts.

Thanks, HandyAndy.

Now you made MY day!

😀

Now to answer some of the other responses....

Originally posted by RJHinds

They were merely accepting the new definition of evolution to mean "a change over time" that includes variation in species within a kind over time. They never indorsed the original definition that all the kinds of animals and plants came from one common ancestor because one kind of animal or plant will never produce another kind.

In my opinion, it is impossible for one to be a Christian and believe in the general theory of evolution, a.k.a. evilution.

Let me respond by sketching you an analogy:

Person A makes a statement: All professional soccer players are non-smokers.

Person B points out that Person C is, in fact, both a professional soccer player as well as a smoker to the tune of twenty a day.

Now Person A should logically and gracefully respond: "OK, although I firmly believe that smoking and soccer do not go together, and that MOST soccer players probably do NOT smoke, I do concede that there may be the odd one that does."

To extrapolate this example to our discussion, you seem to say that either Person C is not really a professional soccer player, or that he is not really a smoker, and then you give your definition as to what you think are characteristics of soccer players and smokers.

This argument is clearly fallacious, because the words "smoker" and "soccer player" are in common usage and most reasonable people would understand them in the same way.

Back to your post: your response above is based on the following two claims:

1 That the Popes in question did not really mean what it appears they said when they use the word Evolution, but that they actually meant some other watered down concept which you thought up, whereas the original text says nothing of the kind, and simply referred to the subject as it is generally understood, and

2 That even in the event that they meant the commonly understood concept of Evolution, that they could then not be real Christians.

Your second paragraph holds the key to this situation: IN MY OPINION...

(Btw, you would gain a lot of credibility if most of your posts were prefaced by those three words!)

I do not share many of your opinions, but I will fight to the death to make sure that you (and anybody else) is allowed to hold any opinions that you chose. That is the basis of our free society!

It is only when a person says that "My opinions are fact, and nobody is allowed to hold any contrary views! that we begin to have problems.

So, to summarise the purpose of this thread:

IN YOUR OPINION anybody who holds a view supportive of Evolution cannot be a true Christian.

However, you repeatedly state this proposition as FACT.

I have demonstrated that there are many people (at least four mentioned by name) who contradict this statement.

Unless we now go into a whole new line of discussion as to who is or is not a True Christian, (which, btw, I am willing to engage you in), all I am asking of you is to refrain from continuing to make this foolish and blatantly incorrect claim.

In peace

CJ

Originally posted by Paul Dirac II
Do you envision God as being so forward-looking that when He was getting Genesis written up, He knew that starting in the 1800s His verbiage was going to cause some schism in the body of Christ over whether it was indeed poetry more than a factual account of natural history?

Hi PDII,

Not sure if your comment is facetious, tongue-in-cheek or serious. I will assume the latter.

Simply put, since God (being God, after all) knows and knew what would and will happen, the answer must be yes.

However, I would not blame "His verbiage" since (as you may have gathered from my other post on the interpretation of the Bible) I do not believe the Bible was written literally word-for-word by God, but by some fallible human beings that wrote as best they could what they thought was the will of God and the Truth at the time.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I'm a young earth creationist, and I believe in evolution. Anything can be
used to be anti-God even the Bible. People use almost anything to suit their
own ends.
Kelly

You don't accept common descent and you don't accept speciation. I think you're straining the gnat with respect to the definition of evolution.

Originally posted by KingOnPoint

Why do you not accept Genesis as creation of part of the universe? If you do not accept that God created "things from nothing", then all of us who believe in creation are not to blame.

Of course I accept Genesis as creation of part of the universe!

Just not literally.....

It is a poetic account of Beginnings, to say that God was the creator of everything (this being re-emphasised in the NT verses which you quote) but he created everything in a way that is only now being discovered by science!

And the so called, Christian believer, Francis Collins, can be simply lying. Or he could really think he is correct and still be wrong. If he doesn't believe God, then how can he say he has faith in Jesus or God?

Why on earth should anybody "simply lie" about this? To what purpose? Maliciously causing people to go to hell? (That is what I believe RJH thinks!)

Do yourself a favour and read his book: The Language of God (or something similar, my recollection is not 100% right now, but I have it at home should you really be interested.)

It is very simple to say that anybody who does not agree with you is lying, but that is not the basis for a rational argument.

Furthermore, how do you know that more things are not being created now? While it may not be that new planets and bodies are created in space, .....

But that is exactly what is happening today! Cosmology and the latest pictures from Hubble etc are showing us evidence of just this phenomenon.

......Christ said that he would prepare a place for his disciples.

Amen to that! But surely not even you and/or RJH believe that this entails some special planet somewhere in the universe? (Oh shucks, you DO, don't you...)

When Sputnik was launched in 1957 (and I clearly remember the day) the Russians said "We found no evidence of God or heaven anywhere". This was supposed to prove their atheistic doctrine. Only those who understand the difference between Spiritual and Physical issues could see how ridiculous this argument is.

Evolution that does not accept that human, animal, and plant life were created when scripture tells that they were, is against God. God will not lie. If God has lied, then we cannot even depend on Him to do anything for us at all or for this universe.

Agreed - IF God can be caught in a lie (and how would you do that??) then we cannot depend on Him. But all that you are saying is that YOU think that such-and-such is what God said, whilst I say: No, that is what you THINK it was that God said. Actually, somebody wrote that while THINKING that this is what God wants them to write...

Forgive me for repeating myself, but the literal words in the Bible are the lowest form of Truth - what is far more important is the entire message taken as a whole, with all its facets, some of which are superficially in conflict with each other...

Originally posted by KellyJay
I'm a young earth creationist, and I believe in evolution. Anything can be
used to be anti-God even the Bible. People use almost anything to suit their
own ends.
Kelly

Sorry, but this I do not understand - unless my own understanding of the concepts "YEC" and "Evolution" are wrong.

YEC by definition sees the Earth (and the universe, for that matter) as being between 6000 and (at most) 10 000 years old.

Evolution maintains that very few real changes, biologically speaking, appear in this kind of timespan. Certainly not the development of mammals.

???

Originally posted by RJHinds
But do you believe your ancestor was a rat? That is what the general theory of evolution teaches. Perhaps you mean you believe in the newer definition of evolution - a change over time - like those two Popes.

Nope, not related to a rat in my opinion.
Kelly

Originally posted by Proper Knob
You don't accept common descent and you don't accept speciation. I think you're straining the gnat with respect to the definition of evolution.

Not straining on anything, I'm not the one who has to believe one life form
came from another and before that another and so on. You want to believe
that, it is up to you, the parts of evolution I accept can be seen today.
Kelly

Originally posted by CalJust
Sorry, but this I do not understand - unless my own understanding of the concepts "YEC" and "Evolution" are wrong.

YEC by definition sees the Earth (and the universe, for that matter) as being between 6000 and (at most) 10 000 years old.

Evolution maintains that very few real changes, biologically speaking, appear in this kind of timespan. Certainly not the development of mammals.

???

Evolution maintains small changes over time, I accept that.
You want to suggest those changes over time can go from say a single cell
till all the variety of life we see today, that is a huge leap of faith in my
opinion.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
Evolution maintains small changes over time, I accept that.
You want to suggest those changes over time can go from say a single cell
till all the variety of life we see today, that is a huge leap of faith in my
opinion.
Kelly

It's not a leap of faith when we can see a time when there were only single cell life forms then later layers have multi-cell life forms.

The evidence is there for anyone to see if you wish but of course that would interfere with your 6000 year old Earth myth.

In the future there will be less and less of your kind of thinking as people begin to reason things out for themselves without having to constantly refer to an ancient book that plagiarized many earlier myths like the 6 day creation myth, that came from Egypt thousands of years before Judaism. So your creation myth isn't even original.

The authors were not creative enough to have come up with their OWN BS story of how we got here but instead, just like movie makers today, repave much older material.

Like Fast and Furious, MORE fast and furious, FASTER and FURIOUSER, EXTREMELY fast and FRIGHTFULLY Furious.

Just like the bible.

Originally posted by CalJust
One claim that is frequently made by creationists (especially Young Earth Creationists) is that [b]evolution is rejected by Christians as being at best anti-God and at worst designed by the devil.

This statement is demonstrably false, since there are many Christians who accept that the ToE best explains the current diversity of life on earth.

One p ...[text shortened]... t, be taken as a literal scientific discourse.

I'm glad that we have got that sorted out now.[/b]

I stated simular thoughts in another thread.

First God is an eternal being. And what is one day to Him.

The story of creation runs hand in hand with evolution. Something from the void, day, night, water, animals.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Evolution maintains small changes over time, I accept that.
You want to suggest those changes over time can go from say a single cell
till all the variety of life we see today, that is a huge leap of faith in my
opinion.
Kelly

It takes how long for a seed to become a tree.
Millions of years for a single cell to evolve. I think i can handle that.

Originally posted by KellyJay
Not straining on anything, I'm not the one who has to believe one life form
came from another and before that another and so on. You want to believe
that, it is up to you, the parts of evolution I accept can be seen today.
Kelly

It's straining to the extreme. To claim you believe in evolution and also think the world is only a few thousand years old is as bonkers as it gets.

Originally posted by CalJust
[b]They were merely accepting the new definition of evolution to mean "a change over time" that includes variation in species within a kind over time. They never indorsed the original definition that all the kinds of animals and plants came from one common ancestor because one kind of animal or plant will never produce another kind.

In my opinion, it is ...[text shortened]... to refrain from continuing to make this foolish and blatantly incorrect claim.

In peace

CJ

I did not make this definition up. See ...

Definition:

Evolution is change over time. Under this broad definition, evolution can refer to a variety of changes that occur over time—the uplifting of mountains, the erosion of riverbeds, or the creation of new species. The term biological evolution is a more specific type of evolution.

Biological evolution refers to the changes over time that occur in living organisms.

http://animals.about.com/od/e/g/evolution.htm

Ask the Pope if he believes a rat or a monkey changed into a man over time and you will see what I mean. I bet his answer will be NO.

Originally posted by KellyJay
I'm a young earth creationist, and I believe in evolution. Anything can be
used to be anti-God even the Bible. People use almost anything to suit their
own ends.
Kelly

you believe in micro evolution just to make the utter crap that is noah's story a little more plausible. when i say a little i mean an amount so small it cannot be measured. even with "kinds" the ark is an impossibility. so no, i don't find you any less ignorant because you believe something you see everyday