Theistic Evolution

[ProZak]

Of course it's been debated before, many times, but in light of Steve Ray's recent book on Genesis thought we'd hash it out again. I used to hold rigidly to YEC, but not so much today, I tend to agree with Hank here...

https://youtu.be/NXxVZtBM1cw?si=jbRDgYng_GJuvH82

[Doom]

I've never agreed with Young Earth Creationism even though I used to belong to the church that popularized it and made it mainstream. I have always believed in evolution.

[ProZak]

I don't think that I could ever embrace TE, to me it's the worst of all possibilities.

[Doom]

The options are theistic evolution or atheistic evolution. After more than 150 years, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, though there are several competing models, and the non-Darwinian model is less supported within the scientific community than the propaganda would suggest. Stephen Jay Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" is the complete repudiation of neo-Darwinianism

[ProZak]

Lol, those are hardly the only two options!

[ProZak]

Better still...

https://youtu.be/URXGTFu00os?si=0Pr7p6M0MnvFD3oQ

[peregrinator]

The options are theistic evolution or atheistic evolution.

no

[Doom]

Evolution is a scientific fact so it either happened with God or without him.

[ProZak]

Evolution is a scientific fact so it either happened with God or without him.

No, it is not. Once again, we know that science is bought and sold based on political and personal agendas. Not all credible scientists hold to the evolutionary theory, but like those scientists who do not tow the line on "Climate Change", they are doxed, ridiculed and canceled.

[ProZak]

Evolution by it's very nature, fosters atheism, as well as racism. The idea that humans evolved differently along racial lines, something that helped shape the minds of such men as Nietzsche, Hitler, Stalin...
There is only one race, the human race, of which various tribes evolved microly.

[Kage_ar]

I've never agreed with Young Earth Creationism even though I used to belong to the church that popularized it and made it mainstream. I have always believed in evolution.

Same here.

[peregrinator]

I believed in (macro)evolution when I was an atheist

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

"Evolution" is a broad word. What do you mean when you say you do or don't believe in "evolution"?

[Doom]

Evolution by it's very nature, fosters atheism, as well as racism.

Nonsense.

There are plenty of theists, Christian and Jewish, who believe in evolution including St. John Paul II. And there is a long 150-year tradition of this. The Catholic Church has never viewed evolution as a big bone of contention. If evolution is true, then it doesn't matter what implications some crazies might draw from it. The truth is just what it simply is. St Augustine proposed something like evolution.

Atheists make similar comments about religion, that it fosters violence, intolerance, and judgementalism.

This is not a line of argument that leads to truth.

[Doom]

Evolution is a scientific fact so it either happened with God or without him.

No, it is not. Once again, we know that science is bought and sold based on political and personal agendas. Not all credible scientists hold to the evolutionary theory, but like those scientists who do not tow the line on "Climate Change", they are doxed, ridiculed and canceled.

What is your educational background, how many credit hours of biology and evolutionary theory do you have to make this judgment?

[Doom]

Do you all know the origins of Young Earth Creationism?

It came from Seventh Day Adventism. 'Prophetess" Ellen G White had a "revelation from God" that the Earth was only 6,000 years old. So Adventist apologists began constructing an elaborate theory to explain away they growing body of evidence of an old Earth. These ideas remained obscure and limited to Adventist circles until 1961 when Henry Morris and John C Witcomb Jr published a book called "The Genesis Flood" which adopted the Adventist arguments wholesale. The first denomination to accept these ideas and to disseminate them into the mainstream was the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. They grew from there until becoming the standard fundamentalist view only in the 1980s.

Wait! I bet you're saying, what about the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, didn't fundamentalists oppose evolution even then?

Yes, they did, but they were Old Earth Creationists. The standard view, held by William Jennings Bryan, was the theory that each "day" of creation was 1 billion years long, thus accommodating the 6 billion year age of the Earth held by modern geologists.

[ProZak]

It just doesn't make sense, why would God use such a violent and mutated process to bring about his crowning creation? Are species still macro evolving?

No, I have zero background in any science, but I know enough not to tust it, especially when it's tied to an agenda.

[Kage_ar]

Evolution is a scientific fact so it either happened with God or without him.

No, it is not. Once again, we know that science is bought and sold based on political and personal agendas. Not all credible scientists hold to the evolutionary theory, but like those scientists who do not tow the line on "Climate Change", they are doxed, ridiculed and canceled.

What is your educational background, how many credit hours of biology and evolutionary theory do you have to make this judgment?

My family, my church, when I was growing up were YEC and very adamant about it. It never made sense to me, and when I was old enough to begin studying on my own, things began to make sense.

What is amazing is now, I can read a book - such as "Sapiens" by Harari - and be as amazed as most educated people got to be when they were kids. I still consume scientific history like it is cool water. Imagine if I had been able to study these things when I was young and my brain was spry?

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

It just doesn't make sense, why would God use such a violent and mutated process to bring about his crowning creation?

This is not a good argument. We don't know what God's motives were or what other things He might have been accomplishing.

Being crucified doesn't make sense either.

[ProZak]

You're analogy is lacking as well, especially if you don't buy into TE...