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Topic: Evolution and Christianity (Read 76 times)

aarclark
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Evolution and Christianity
« Thread Started on Feb 19, 2012, 10:00pm »

The following is a discussion following this article on godoflamb.com: http://www.godoflamb.com/2012/02/18/evolution-or-christianity/#comment-96

Merrilee Jarvis:

insightful, well organized thought. You left me wanting more- interesting- thanks for the post!

April:

I absolutely love this article. From Christianity to reincarnation and then some, you’ve covered so much of this world’s conflicting beliefs in so few, eloquently chosen words, amazing. I enjoyed reading every word. Thank you!

Aaron M. Clark:

This is a nicely thought out article, oneid1hrn. I’m glad you posted on this. Reflecting on my own “conversion” to belief in evolution, I remember the inner turmoil I felt about it. I thought, “could this possibly be, if Christianity is true?” As cliche as it sounds, I think this was completely due to the way I was brought up. It just didn’t seem right. But when I couldn’t refute the facts that Francis Collins presented in a lecture, I knew it was the most rational thing to believe. At least, it seemed far more plausible that creationism, and following this I began to see just how wonderful the idea of evolution could be. First of all, who am I to say how God should have created the universe? To say that he needed to create me in a manner that we would otherwise call “magic” is really quite egocentric, actually. And second, over time I began to see just how magnificent the idea that a dense ball of energy burst, creating space and time, colliding and creating matter, matter clumping and forming stars with the perfect balance of gravity and thermal pressure to stabilize, galaxies forming, and once those initial stars died and spewed heavy elements into space they began creating the types of planets we see, and on at least one of those planets, an incredible thing happened – life developed. How magnificent!

I think there are problems for the evolutionist. For instance, it is a big extrapolation to say that Darwinism is true at a grand level. We infer this, but there is limited fossil and skeletal evidence to support it completely, which is a real problem for full blown naturalist. But there are way more problems for the six day creationist. Nevertheless, I think why christians and atheists alike think christianity and evolution are incompatible is because of a hidden assumption…that seemingly random mutation must be unguided. This, however, does not follow logically. The fact that we cannot identify a pattern that we might attribute to God’s guidance does not entail that God did not guide it. Nevertheless, I think it is unfortunate that people are so torn over the subject when it is really irrelevant to the legitimacy of Christian belief in the first place. Also, it is widely understood in Biblical scholarship, as you alluded to, that Genesis isn’t even meant to be read literally! Authors weren’t even employing scientific, factual sorts of writing, and there’s lots of evidence within the text itself that it isn’t meant to be read literally. By reading Genesis literally, we would commit the same errer we would if we read the gospels as poetry. The gospels aren’t written to be poetry, they were written as historical accounts (which, of course, are subject to historical criticism…but the issue at hand is how we approach certain books of the bible). In the end, I agree that the idea that christianity and evolution are incompatible is illusory, and irrelevant to christian belief (or any other type of belief in God).

« Last Edit: Feb 19, 2012, 10:02pm by aarclark »

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jbturnstone
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Re: Evolution and Christianity
« Reply #1 on Feb 20, 2012, 11:58am »

The funny thing about creationists (and especially "young earth" creationists who take Noah's Ark seriously) is that they dismiss the theory of evolution because it cannot be demonstrated (and proved) in a controlled scientific experiment, while it has been demonstrated (and proved) for quite some time now that many different animals are incapable of successfully sustaining their populations through incestuous reproduction, which would've been required of every living creature (including us) in the aftermath of The Flood. In some species you end up with physical deformities; in others you get mutated chromosomes resulting in infertility. They would've been okay for a few generations, but eventually a lack of genetic diversity would've put much of Earth's animal life in danger of extinction.

Then there's the fact that you have to honest ask, which is more likely? Finches growing stronger bills to crack stronger seeds, or one man and his family building a boat big enough to hold two of every animal which would of course require enough space to store their food, water, and manure (how exactly are you going to prevent massive parasitic infestations? How are you going to limit the rats and mice to two per species when they can breed and give birth to dozens of new rodents over the course of 40 days? How is one family going to have enough time to physically shovel that much shit every day and keep their animals from developing foot rot? And if it's raining for 40 consecutive days how are you going to ventilate the Ark and let fresh air in without flooding the stalls and rotting the timbers of the window frames?) What if an elephant loses its balance? What if a rhino pierces the hull? Won't different species who've never encountered each other before inevitably pass diseases back and forth and die because they haven't developed any respective immunities? How are you going to keep the lions away from the deer? Do you have "auxiliary" deer on hand to feed the lions? Or are you going to convince them to become vegetarians for 40 days? What are you going to do about animals who languish in captivity and require room to breathe and stretch and exercise their legs? If the animals don't get exercise, their muscles might deteriorate.

Just how big was this Ark?

It would have to be roughly the size of Cuba.

Even so, it's the finch theory that remains unreasonable.

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wooljesus
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Re: Evolution and Christianity
« Reply #2 on Feb 20, 2012, 6:51pm »

I think one of the major roadblocks to understanding evolution is the complete inability for a human being to comprehend and properly interpret the time scale on which such a mechanism operates.

I'll point you to http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/03/taming-wild-animals/ratliff-text, an article concerning a groundbreaking experiment conducted on wild foxes; the researchers began with a population of wild foxes and bred them purely for friendliness towards humans. In a scant half-century, the animals changed from completely wild to craving human contact. Again, that's over a period of five decades.

Considering that ten times this length is only 500 years, times another factor of ten to only 5,000 years, times one more factor of ten to 50,000 years, roughly the time since the emergence of the cro-magnon man, human art, and specific tool making, one begins to understand how quickly - not slowly - species can change. Humans are an especially interesting animal, as they massively alter their environment (by introducing tools and sculpting the terrain), which in turn works in reverse, and exponentially faster, in altering them.

Now think about 500,000 years, a million years, 50 million years - fifty million times the speed of domesticating foxes - and you start to see the bigger picture. And, astonishingly, we're only about 1/100th of the way back to the formation of the planet, and only 1/10th of the way back to the beginning of complex animals.

There has been a lot of time for animals with relatively miniscule life-cycles to reproduce and change.

« Last Edit: Feb 22, 2012, 2:46am by wooljesus »

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Ashley R
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Re: Evolution and Christianity
« Reply #3 on Feb 21, 2012, 10:13pm »

Great post! You make some excellent points about Christianity and evolution. I really think that it is asinine for anyone to truly believe that they can wrap their heads around the whole concept of either one. The fact of the matter is that whether you believe in Christianity, evolution, or both, you have to rely on some sort of faith. No one that is on this earth today was on it at the time of its origination, so no one really knows what really happened.

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