Can You Believe Both the Bible and Evolution?
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A number of the world's mainstream religions have come to accept Darwinian evolution as the explanation for our existence. But does Darwinism really square with the Scriptures?
Are we the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve or did God guide our journey into existence by the forces of evolution? The wisdom of this world, particularly in Europe, is increasingly embracing the idea that we can accept both the teachings of the Bible and the theory of evolution. But are they really compatible?
Wrote Clive Cookson in the Financial Times, "The Vatican, which often appeared ambivalent in the past, has recently gone out of its way to affirm the compatibility of evolutionary science with the Bible" (Dec. 23, 2005, emphasis added throughout).
Many clergymen believe in evolution
A movement known as the Clergy Letter Project, signed by 10,000 ordained ministers and priests in America, stated: "We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as 'one theory among others' is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children" (ibid.).
It is astonishing to fully realize the grip that the concept of evolution has on increasing numbers who also profess to believe in God and presumably His Word. And yet at the same time growing numbers of competent scientists are becoming outspoken critics of Darwinism.
As the Australian molecular biologist and medical doctor Michael Denton, himself an agnostic, has written, evolutionary theory "is still, as it was in Darwin's time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe" ( Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1986, p. 77).
Even some who support intelligent design (ID) somehow conceive of it as also compatible with Darwinism. The Economist put it this way: "But if God has a plan for the world and everyone in it . . . then it is much easier to imagine evolution occurring under divine guidance than as a result of random mutation and the survival of the fittest."
Many believe that God has used the evolutionary process of natural selection to accomplish His ultimate purpose for the human family.
Even the noted paleontologist and agnostic Stephen Jay Gould saw fit to state, "Either half of my colleagues are enormously stupid or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with religious beliefs —and equally compatible with atheism" ("Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge," quoted in Dawkins' God, 2005, p. 80).
This approach—believing that a divine being guided the evolutionary process—is called theistic evolution. But according to what we find in the Bible, has God ever worked that way? The title of this article is: "Can You Believe Both the Bible and Evolution?" It could just as well have been titled "Can You Believe Both God and Evolution?"
Who made a man from dust?
Since there is so little understanding about what Scripture actually says on this subject, let's make the consistent biblical position very plain and clear. The human creation account begins in the first chapter of the very first book of the Bible.
"Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth'" (Genesis 1:26).
Here Scripture draws a clear distinction between man and the animal world. Previous passages plainly show that mammals, birds and fish were definitely not created in the image of God (verses 20-25). Only man shares that awesome distinction and for a grand purpose. (To understand further, please request or download our free booklet Who Is God? )
God first states His intention to create human beings and then He does it. "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them" (verse 27).
More details are revealed in the second chapter. "And the Lord God formed man [Adam] of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living being" (Genesis 2:7).
The biblical narrative is in sharp contrast to those who believe that evolution has shaped dust into humanity. In essence this belief amounts to idolatry since evolution has been put in the place of God.
The narrative continues with the creation of Eve. "And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man'" (Genesis 2:21-23).
The account shows that sex was created by God, not by evolution as so many scientists seem to claim. "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh" (verse 24).
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Part2... continued...
The Psalms confirm creation
Other books in the Bible, like the Psalms, confirm the Genesis account of the human creation. Consider the human eye. We may ask, who designed the first eye? How could the eye possibly be the product of an accidental mutation? How could aeons of gradual change produce an eye—an astoundingly complex organ that needs all of its highly integrated parts to function?
The psalmist gives the credit to God. "He who planted the ear, shall He not hear? He who formed the eye, shall He not see?" (Psalm 94:9).
What did King David say about his own origins? "I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14). He attributed his existence directly to God and went on to describe how the Creator knew all of his parts even while he was in his mother's womb (verses 15-16).
David asked the crucial question: "What is man that You are mindful of Him . . . ? You made him a little lower than the angels . . ." (Psalm 8:4-5). He goes on to tell us how man has been given rule over the earth, including the flora and the fauna (verses 6-
.
Columnist Mark Steyn, writing in the British Spectator, said this pivotal passage "accurately conveys the central feature of our world—our dominion over pretty much everything else out there." He adds that the writer of this psalm "captured the essence of our reality better than your average geneticist" ("O Come, All Ye Faithless," Dec. 17, 2005).
Jesus Christ and Paul believed in man's creation
Notice what Jesus Christ Himself said: "But from the beginning of the creation, God 'made them male and female'" (Mark 10:6). Then in Matthew's parallel account Christ asks the question: "Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female' . . . ?" (Matthew 19:4).
Christ's question underscores the importance of reading and believing the Bible—and in this case especially the creation accounts in the early chapters of Genesis.
When the apostle Paul confronted the blatant idolatry of the philosophers of Athens on the Areopagus, adjoining the Athenian Acropolis, he told them that "the God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth . . . From one man He made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth" (Acts 17:24, 26, New International Version).
All generations of human beings came from one man—and that man was named Adam. Paul adds, "And so it is written [in Genesis]: ' The first man Adam became a living being'" (1 Corinthians 15:45).
Paul also understood the order in which the first man and first woman were created. "For Adam was formed first, then Eve" (1 Timothy 2:13). And as surprising as it may seem, He also wrote: "For man [Adam] did not come from woman, but woman [Eve] from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man" (1 Corinthians 11:8-9, NIV).
Since all of their descendants were born of a woman (verse 12), Paul could not have written this passage unless he implicitly believed in the Genesis account.
Drawing the obvious conclusions
There is simply no way of reshaping the Bible into a book that also somehow supports the theory of evolution. If we are brave enough to accept the creation account at face value, then theistic evolution becomes impossible to believe. We cannot believe both the Bible and evolution. Both Old and New Testaments consistently support the account of the divine creation of Adam and Eve.
Logically, what we are obliged to do now is to examine the evidence for the authority and authenticity of the Bible, along with God's existence, and compare them with the viability of the theory of evolution.
If you would like to seriously pursue these lines of thought, we invite you to request or download our free booklets
Is the Bible True?, Life's Ultimate Question: Does God Exist? and Creation or Evolution: Does It Really Matter What You Believe?
by John Ross Schroeder
http://www.gnmagazine.org/index.htm -
Here is one subject you can call me a stubborn mule, I still cannot bring myself to agree with this theory of evolution, I still prefer to subscribe to the literal account of creation as discribed in Genesis.
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And I am right there behind you.... I too find it hard to believe in evolution. Will continue this topic with the post from Good news... Shalom!Originally posted by vince69:Here is one subject you can call me a stubborn mule, I still cannot bring myself to agree with this theory of evolution, I still prefer to subscribe to the literal account of creation as discribed in Genesis. -
i find hard to agree with the bible oso leh. how?
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I really can't accept the crap book - Bible. So one day, God feel bored after millions and millions of years, creating simple year forms to dinosaurs to animals then he suddenly think, " Why not i create something in my own image?" WTF!
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... interesting article and an equally interesting website.... a splinter group of Worldwide Church of God founded by Herbert W. Armstrong. I remember when I was much younger, I'd subscribed to magazines published by WCG....
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It is possible that Adam and Eve were Neanderthals.
Don't forget much of the bible is based on symbolism. THe only official records of Jewish existence dates from the time of ABraham. -
why do you find it hard to agree with the bible?Originally posted by Ito_^:i find hard to agree with the bible oso leh. how? -
you cannot accept the crap book why? It's very easy to say it is a crap book, without much justification.Originally posted by NUS_Superst@r:I really can't accept the crap book - Bible. So one day, God feel bored after millions and millions of years, creating simple year forms to dinosaurs to animals then he suddenly think, " Why not i create something in my own image?" WTF! -
Humans were both created and evolved. God Created the first humans ,which is not Adam and Eve, and we evolved from there onwards.
And the stroy of Adam and Eve is a metaphor. Im not sure why some people love to take things at face value. -
Society's Dramatic Shift
Why has evolution become so widely accepted, and why has the Bible come to be viewed with such hostility? What has changed? In this booklet we examine the foundational premises of evolution. We consider the evidence evolutionists cite to support the theory. Perhaps most important, we look at the scientific facts evolutionists don't discuss in public—for reasons that will become clear. You can know whether evolution is true. We hope you'll examine the evidence carefully. What you believe does matter.
Why has evolution become so widely accepted, and why has the Bible come to be viewed with such hostility? What has changed?
Only a few generations ago laws prevented the teaching of the theory of evolution in some communities and regions in the United States. The Bible was commonly accepted as true and a reliable account of our origins. But now almost the opposite is true. The Bible is banned from classrooms in American schools, and serious discussion of the biblical view of the creation of our universe—and our human origins—is forbidden. At the same time, criticism of the theory of evolution is at times ruthlessly suppressed in academic and scientific circles.
Certainly not all scientists agree that no Creator exists and that we as human beings are the product of random chance. In 1972 the California State Board of Education asked NASA director Wernher von Braun, who has been called the father of the American space program, for his thoughts on the origin of the universe, life and the human race. Here's how he responded: "For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all. In the world around us, we can behold the obvious manifestations of an ordered, structured plan or design . . .
"And we are humbled by the powerful forces at work on a galactic scale, and the purposeful orderliness of nature that endows a tiny and ungainly seed with the ability to develop into a beautiful flower. The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based . . .
"To be forced to believe only one conclusion—that everything in the universe happened by chance—would violate the very objectivity of science itself. Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?
"Some people say that science has been unable to prove the existence of a Designer. They admit that many of the miracles in the world around us are hard to understand, and they do not deny that the universe, as modern science sees it, is indeed a far more wondrous thing than the creation medieval man could perceive. But they still maintain that since science has provided us with so many answers the day will soon arrive when we will be able to understand even the fundamental laws of nature without a Divine intent.
They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun? . . .
"What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive of Him?" (Scott Huse, The Collapse of Evolution, 1997, pp. 159-160).
Many educated people accept the theory of evolution. But is it true? Curiously enough, our existence as humans is one of the best arguments against it. According to evolutionary theory, the traits that offer the greatest advantage for survival are passed from generation to generation. Yet human reproduction itself argues powerfully against this fundamental premise of evolution.
If evolution is the guiding force in human development, how is it that higher forms of life evolved with male and female sexes? If humans are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, how is it that we have the disadvantage of requiring a member of the opposite sex to reproduce, when lower forms of life—such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa—are sexless and far more prolific? If they can reproduce by far simpler methods, why can't we? If evolution is true, what went wrong?
Let's take it a step further. If humans are the result of evolution continually reinforcing characteristics that offer a survival advantage while eliminating those that hinder perpetuation, how can we explain a human infant?
Among thousands of species the newly born (or newly hatched) are capable of survival within a matter of days or, in some cases, only minutes. Many never even see their parents. Yet, among humans, an infant is utterly helpless—not for days but for up to several years after birth.
A human baby is reliant on adults for the nourishment, shelter and care he or she needs to survive. Meanwhile, caring for that helpless infant is a distinct survival disadvantage for adults, since giving of their time and energy lessens their own prospects for survival.
If evolution is true, and humans are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process, why does a process as basic as human reproduction fly in the face of everything that evolution holds true?
Regrettably, such obvious flaws in the theory are too often overlooked.
Even Charles Darwin, whose theories about evolution took the world by storm, had second thoughts. In his later years he reflected on what he had started: "I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion of them" (William Federer, America's God and Country, 1996, p. 199, emphasis added).
Now, almost a century and a half after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, we can see where his thinking has led. In Europe in particular, belief in a personal God has plummeted. In the United States, court decisions have interpreted constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion as freedom from religion—effectively banning public expression of religious beliefs and denying the country's rich religious heritage.
Meanwhile, the world languishes in the sorrow and suffering resulting from rejecting absolute moral standards. With no absolute standards, we have no reason to care what happens to our fellowman. We should seek only our personal gain regardless of the cost to others—acting exactly as evolutionary theory says we should.
Could man create a religion with no god? The widespread acceptance of evolution shows that we have done just that. The Bible teaches us that God created man. Evolution teaches us that man created God.
If God created man we have no right to ignore Him. If man created God we can easily ignore Him. What man has made he can do away with. Thus we are free to act as though God doesn't exist, free to dismiss the Bible, free to determine for ourselves what is right and wrong and how we will choose to live.
Which is the myth, God or evolution? Louis Bounoure, director of France's Strasbourg Zoological Museum and professor of biology at the University of Strasbourg, stated: "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless" (Federer, p. 61).
Professor Bounoure, though right about evolution, was wrong about one thing. Rather than being useless, evolution is quite useful if one wants to reject the idea of God.
You can know whether evolution is true. We hope you'll examine the evidence carefully. What you believe does matter. -
I dont prescribe to either end, but rather, lean on this alternative theory which propose creation followed by a period of evolution.
Evidences, or lack of it, are hammering both sides.
By the way, I just found out the answer to the chicken and egg question in a RD article yesterday
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Really? so what is the answer??Originally posted by laurence82:I dont prescribe to either end, but rather, lean on this alternative theory which propose creation followed by a period of evolution.
Evidences, or lack of it, are hammering both sides.
By the way, I just found out the answer to the chicken and egg question in a RD article yesterday -
U wait har....Originally posted by breytonhartge:Really? so what is the answer?? -
Science, the Bible and Wrong Assumptions
The theory of evolution, long taught in schools and assumed to be true by many in the scientific community, is increasingly questioned by scientists and university professors in various fields.
Why do questions arise? It is because as scientific knowledge has increased researchers have not been able to confirm basic assumptions of the evolutionary theory—and in fact some have been refuted outright.
As more scientists and educators become aware of flaws in the theory, they are more carefully assessing it. In the United States some states' educational boards have become aware of the mounting scientific evidence against evolution and have begun to insist the theory be emphasized less or treated more evenhandedly in the classroom.
Yet there is a powerful insistence by many in the scientific community not to question the theory, for much is at stake.
Phillip Johnson, law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has written several books about the evolution debate. He approaches the evidence for and against evolution as though evaluating a legal case. He notes the strong vested interests involved in the debate: "Naturalistic evolution is not merely a scientific theory; it is the official creation story of modern culture. The scientific priesthood that has authority to interpret the official creation story gains immense cultural influence thereby, which it might lose if the story were called into question. The experts therefore have a vested interest in protecting the story . . ." (Darwin on Trial, 1993, p. 159).
Professor Johnson critically examines the logic and reasoning evolutionists use in the debate. He likens the carefully protected theory to a warship that has sprung a leak. "Darwinian evolution . . . makes me think of a great battleship on the ocean of reality. Its sides are heavily armored with philosophical barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with big rhetorical guns ready to intimidate any would-be attackers.
"In appearance, it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed to be only a few years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, and the more perceptive of the ship's officers have begun to sense that all the ship's firepower cannot save it if the leak is not plugged. There will be heroic efforts to save the ship, of course . . . The spectacle will be fascinating, and the battle will go on for a long time. But in the end reality will win" (Johnson, pp. 169-170).
But what is behind the debate? How did an unproven theory gain such wide acceptance? How did alternate theories come to be summarily dismissed without a hearing? How did the biblical account of the origin of the universe and man lose so much credibility?
The roots of the battle between evolution and the Bible go back centuries.
Differing interpretations of the Bible
It is a shame that scientists and religious figures alike have perpetuated many myths about creation and nature. In the past few centuries, science has refuted some religious notions about nature and the universe that religious leaders mistakenly attributed to the Bible. Sadly, this has caused some religious leaders and institutions to take unnecessarily dogmatic stands that were only harmful in the long run.
At the same time misunderstandings about what the Bible does and does not say have led some on all sides of the debate to accept wrong conclusions.
For example, in late 1996 Pope John Paul II shocked both Catholics and non-Catholics when he mused that the theory of evolution seemed valid for the physical evolution of man and other species through natural selection and hereditary adaptations.
How did this startling declaration come about? What factors led to this far-reaching conclusion?
Time magazine commented on the pope's statement: "[Pope] Pius [in 1950] was skeptical of evolution but tolerated study and discussion of it; the statement by John Paul reflects the church's acceptance of evolution. He did not, however, diverge at all from Pius on the question of the origin of man's soul: that comes from God, even if 'the human body is sought in living material which existed before it.'
"The statement is unlikely to influence the curriculum of Catholic schools, where students have studied evolution since the 1950s. Indeed, taking the Bible literally has not been a hallmark among Catholics through much of the 20th century. Asked about the pope's statement, Peter Stravinskas, editor of the 1991 Catholic Encyclopedia, said: 'It's essentially what Augustine was writing. He tells us that we should not interpret Genesis literally, and that it is poetic and theological language'" (Time, international edition, Nov. 4, 1996, p. 59).
The Catholic theologian Augustine lived 354-430. The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as "the dominant personality of the Western Church of his time, generally recognized as the greatest thinker of Christian antiquity." It adds, "He fused the religion of the New Testament with the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy" (15th edition, 1975, Micropaedia Vol. 1, "Augustine of Hippo, Saint," pp. 649-650).
Little did Augustine realize he was doing his followers a grave disservice by viewing parts of the Bible as allegorical while simultaneously incorporating into his teaching the views of the Greek philosophers. For the next 1,300 years, covering roughly the medieval age, the view of those pagan philosophers became the standard for the Roman church's explanation of the universe.
Furthermore, ecclesiastical leaders adopted the earth-centered view of the universe held by Ptolemy, an Egyptian-born astronomer of the second century. "It was . . . from the work of previous [Greek] astronomers," says the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "that Ptolemy evolved his detailed description of an Earth-centered (geocentric) universe, a revolutionary but erroneous idea that governed astronomical thinking for over 1,300 years . . .
"In essence, it is a synthesis of the results obtained by Greek astronomy . . . On the motions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, Ptolemy again extended the observations and conclusions of Hipparchus—this time to formulate his geocentric theory, which is popularly known as the Ptolemaic system" (Britannica, 15th edition, 1975, Macropaedia Vol. 15, "Ptolemy," p. 179).
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Science the bible and wrong assumptions...part2
The Bible and the universe
Thus it was not the biblical perspective but the Greek view of the cosmos—in which everything revolved around a stationary earth—that was to guide man's concept of the universe for many centuries. The Roman Catholic Church made the mistake of tying its concept of the universe to that of earlier pagan philosophers and astronomers, then enforced that erroneous view.
Although the Greeks thought Atlas held up first the heavens and later the earth, and the Hindus believed the earth rested atop four gigantic elephants, the Bible has long revealed the true explanation. We read in Job 26:7 an astonishingly modern scientific concept, that God "hangs the earth on nothing." Science has demonstrated that this "nothing" is the invisible force of gravity that holds the planet in its orbit.
Centuries passed before Nicolas Copernicus calculated that the earth was not the center of the universe. However, he was cautious about challenging the Roman church on this belief. More than a century would elapse before someone would be bold enough and possessed sufficient evidence to clash with the established religious authorities.
In the 1690s, after observing through a telescope the moons orbiting Jupiter, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei beheld clear evidence that the earth revolved around the sun and not vice versa. Catholic authorities considered the idea heretical, and Galileo was threatened with death if he did not recant. Finally he did, although legend has it that, as he left the presence of the pope, he muttered under his breath: "But it [the earth] still moves."
"When the Roman church attacked Copernicus and Galileo," says Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer, "it was not because their teaching actually contained anything contrary to the Bible. The church authorities thought it did, but that was because Aristotelian elements had become part of church orthodoxy, and Galileo's notions clearly conflicted with them. In fact, Galileo defended the compatibility of Copernicus and the Bible, and this was one of the factors which brought about his trial" (How Shall We Then Live?, 1976, p. 131).
Ironically, these first battles between scientists and the Bible were over biblical misinterpretations, not what the Bible actually says.
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The egg. The modern chicken is generally believed to be a 'descendant' of Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird, This 150 million year old resdient of the Jurassic period laid eggs, and at some point evolved into an animal that was one generation away from a proper chicken. This creature would have produced the egg out of which the first chicken emerged. Therefore, the egg come first.
Ho ho ho...
Anyway, can be disprove, but this is just for trivia sake. -
Science, the bible and wrong assumptions part3...
The Bible and scientific advancement
Several centuries later, a more-proper biblical understanding actually furthered scientific advancements and achievements. The English scholar Robert Merton maintains that the values Puritanism promoted in 17th-century England encouraged scientific endeavors. A Christian was to glorify God and serve Him through participating in activities of practical value to his community. He wasn't to withdraw into the contemplative life of monasteries and convents.
Christians were to choose a vocation that best made use of their talents. Reason and education were praised in the context of educating people with practical knowledge, not the highly literary classics of pagan antiquity, that they might better do their life's work. Puritanism also encouraged literacy, because each believer had to be able to read the Bible for himself and not depend on what others said it meant. Historians note that the invention of the printing press and subsequent broader distribution of the Bible in the 1500s played a large role in the emergence of modern science. "The rise of modern science," says Francis Schaeffer, "did not conflict with what the Bible teaches; indeed, at a crucial point the Scientific Revolution rested upon what the Bible teaches.
"Both Alfred North Whitehead and J. Robert Oppenheimer have stressed that modern science was born out of the Christian world view . . . As far as I know, neither of the two men were Christians . . . Because the early scientists believed that the world was created by a reasonable God, they were not surprised to discover that people could find out something true about nature and the universe on the basis of reason" (Schaeffer, pp. 132-133).
As this more biblically based science expanded, ecclesiastical leaders had to admit that some long-held positions were wrong. With the esteemed position that the earth was at the center of the universe proven false, the church lost both prestige and credibility to emerging science. As time went on, scientific study grew increasingly apart from the dominant religion, which was mired in its Greek and medieval thought. This gap has only widened with time.
Evolution's early roots
Although evolution wasn't popularized until 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, the roots of the idea go much further back in history.
"The early Greek philosophers," explains British physicist Alan Hayward, "were probably the first thinkers to toy with the notion of evolution. Along with many other ideas from ancient Greece it reappeared in western Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries . . . But one great difficulty stood in the way. Nobody . . . could explain convincingly how evolution could have taken place. Each species seemed to be fixed. There seemed no way in which one species could give rise to another...
"Darwin changed all that with his theory that the way evolution worked was by 'natural selection.' He proposed that small variations in each generation—the kind of natural variations that enable breeders to produce new varieties of dogs and cows and apples and roses—would eventually add up to very big differences, and thus, over hundreds of millions of years, could account for every species on earth" (Creation and Evolution: Rethinking the Evidence From Science and the Bible, 1985, pp. 4-5).
Thus, in the late 19th century, scientists and educators were sidetracked from discovering the truth about the origin and meaning of life when they adopted Darwin's reasoning. Their widespread acceptance of an alternative explanation for the existence of man and the creation apart from the account of Genesis soon led to a general distrust of the Bible. This massive shift of thought has had far-reaching consequences. "Darwinism," says Dr. Hayward, "begins to look more like a huge maze without an exit, where the world has wandered aimlessly for a century and a half" (Hayward, p. 58 ).
Meanwhile the churches, having centuries earlier incorporated unscientific, unbiblical Greek philosophical concepts into their views, could not adequately explain and defend aspects of their teachings. They, too, were ultimately sidetracked by their mixing of pagan philosophy with the Bible. Both science and religion built their explanations on wrong foundations.
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Science, the bible and wrong assumptions part4
Acceptance of evolution
Some of the reasons for the acceptance of Darwin's theory involved conditions of the time. The 19th century was an era of social and religious unrest. Science was riding a crest of popularity. Impressive discoveries and inventions appeared constantly.
Darwin himself had an impeccable reputation as a dedicated naturalist, but the length and tediousness of his book hid many of the weaknesses of his theory (he described his own book as "one long argument" ). It was in this climate that Darwin's theory gained acceptance.
At the same time, the Roman church was being affected by its own cumulative mistakes about science as well as the critics' onslaughts against its teachings and the Bible. The church itself began to accept supposedly scientific explanations over divine ones. A bias against the supernatural slowly crept in.
The momentum grew in the 20th century until many Protestants and Catholics accepted theistic evolution. This is the belief that God occasionally intervenes in a largely evolutionary process through such steps as creating the first cell and then permitting the whole process of evolution to take place or by simply waiting for the first man to appear from the gradual chain of life and then providing him with a soul. "Darwinian evolution to them," says Dr. Hayward, "is merely the method by which God, keeping discreetly in the background, created every living thing . . . The majority of theistic evolutionists have a somewhat liberal view of the Bible, and often regard the early chapters of Genesis as a collection of Hebrew myths" (Hayward, p. 8 ).
The implications for the trustworthiness of the Bible are enormous. Is it the inspired and infallible Word of God, or are parts of it merely well-intentioned myths? Are sections of it simply inaccurate and unreliable? Were Jesus Christ and the apostles wrong when they expressed their belief that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman, created directly by God? (Matthew 19:4; 1 Corinthians 15:45). Was Christ mistaken, and did He mislead others? Is 2 Timothy 3:16 true, that "all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine [teaching] . . ."? Clearly, the implications for Christian faith and teaching are profound (see "The Testimony of the New Testament," p. 4).
Perhaps the effects of his theory on Darwin's own faith can illustrate the damage it can do to religious convictions. Darwin started as a theology student and a staunch respecter of the Bible. But, as he formulated his theories, he lost faith in the Old Testament. Later he could no longer believe in the miracles of the New Testament.
A danger lies in following in Darwin's footsteps. We should remember the old saying: If you teach a child he is only an animal, don't complain when he behaves like one. Can we not lay part of the blame for rampant immorality and crime on society's prevalent values and beliefs—derived to a great extent from evolutionary theory?
Darwinism and morality
If there isn't a just God to judge the actions of men, isn't it easier for man to do as he pleases? Sir Julian Huxley admitted why many quickly embraced evolution with such fervor: "I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores" (James Kennedy, Why I Believe, 1999, p. 49).
He later wrote, "The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a super-human being is enormous" (Essays of a Humanist, 1966, p. 223).
Could this perspective have something to do with the immorality rampant in so many schools and universities where God is banned from the classroom and evolutionary theory is accepted and taught as fact?
Can the Genesis account be reconciled with the idea of an ancient earth? What about evolution? How strong is its case? Let's carefully weigh the evidence. -
interesting....Originally posted by laurence82:The egg. The modern chicken is generally believed to be a 'descendant' of Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird, This 150 million year old resdient of the Jurassic period laid eggs, and at some point evolved into an animal that was one generation away from a proper chicken. This creature would have produced the egg out of which the first chicken emerged. Therefore, the egg come first.
Ho ho ho...
Anyway, can be disprove, but this is just for trivia sake.
but then how did the evolution occur? would not the mutation have taken place in the genes that formed the egg... so in that essence... the chicken came first... ? -
The Testimony of the New Testament
Many passages show us that Christ and the apostles fully accepted the Genesis account of the creation. Jesus talked about "the beginning of the creation which God created" (Mark 13:19; see also Matthew 24:21).
He once asked some who questioned Him: "Have you not read that He who made them [Adam and Eve] at the beginning 'made them male and female'?" (Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6). Later the resurrected Christ referred to Himself as "the Beginning of the creation" (Revelation 3:14).
Many are surprised to learn that the Bible reveals Christ as the Creator! More than once the apostle Paul explained to early Christians that God had created all things by Jesus Christ (Ephesians 3:9; Colossians 1:16). Hebrews 1:2 tells us that God "has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, . . .through whom also He made the worlds."
Paul also told the Athenians that God made all nations "from one blood" (Acts 17:26); all are descendants of Adam and Eve. Paul believed all that was written in the Law and the Prophets (Acts 24:14), including the creation accounts.
Finally, both the specifics and the tenor of Peter's last letter tell us that he, too, believed in creation (see 2 Peter 3:4-7 in particular). -
Scientists, Creation and Evolution
No one should assume that scientists uniformly agree that there is no God and that the world around us is the product of a mindless evolutionary process. Consider what some scientists have to say about creation and evolution:
"For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume [Origin of Species] on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I arrived."
- Charles Darwin (1809-1882), British naturalist who popularized the theory of evolution through natural selection
"The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Into his tiniest creatures, God has placed extraordinary properties that turn them into agents of destruction of dead matter."
"A bit of science distances one from God, but much science nears one to Him."
- Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), French scientist, developer of pasteurization process for milk and vaccines for anthrax, chicken cholera and rabies, dean of the faculty of sciences at Lille University
"Manned space flight is an amazing achievement, but it has opened for mankind thus far only a tiny door for viewing the awesome reaches of space. An outlook through this peephole at the vast mysteries of the universe should only confirm our belief in the certainty of its Creator."
"It is in scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance."
"Atheists all over the world have . . . called upon science as their crown witness against the existence of God. But as they try, with arrogant abuse of scientific reasoning, to render proof there is no God, the simple and enlightening truth is that their arguments boomerang. For one of the most fundamental laws of natural science is that nothing in the physical world ever happens without a cause.
"There simply cannot be a creation without some kind of Spiritual Creator . . . In the world around us we can behold the obvious manifestations of the Divine plan of the Creator"
- Dr. Wernher von Braun (1912-1977), NASA director and "father of the American Space Program"
"The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been deceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach: but each, in his specialty, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate."
"The theory of evolution is impossible. At base, in spite of appearances, no one any longer believes in it . . . Evolution is a kind of dogma which the priests no longer believe, but which they maintain for their people."
- Paul Lemoine (1878-1940), director of the Paris Natural History Museum, president of the Geological Society of France and editor of Encyclopedie Francaise
"To postulate that the development and survival of the fittest is entirely a consequence of chance mutations seems to me a hypothesis based on no evidence and irreconcilable with the facts. These classical evolutionary theories are a gross over-simplification of an immensely complex and intricate mass of facts, and it amazes me that they are swallowed so uncritically and readily, and for such a long time, by so many scientists without a murmur of protest."
- Sir Ernst Chain (1906-1979), co-holder of the 1945 Nobel Prize for isolating and purifying penicillin, director of Rome's International Research Center for Chemical Microbiology, professor of biochemistry at Imperial College, University of London -
Ancient Near-Eastern Concepts of Creation
Is the Genesis account only an ancient myth, no better than tales originating in other cultures over the millennia? Many people obviously think so. Notice what Richard Dawkins, professor of zoology at Oxford University and professed atheist, has to say about the biblical account:
"Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story is just the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of Middle Eastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular West African tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants" (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, 1986, p. 316).
But is Professor Dawkins' assumption true? Is the Genesis record a fairy tale little different from those of other ancient cultures?
Some 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians of Mesopotamia left accounts of their creation myths inscribed on cuneiform tablets. The Sumerians conceived of the earth as flat and the sky as a canopy of clouds and stars. They believed earth and sky were created by two gods: An, the male sky god, and Ki, the female earth god.
These two gave birth to a multitude of other gods, each with a particular power and responsibility over a part of the creation or physical phenomena (lightning, trees, mountains, illness, etc.). They lived in a kingly court in heaven, with An, the supreme god, surrounded by four subordinate creator gods. Below them were a council of seven gods and, finally, the 50 remaining minor gods.
All physical occurrences could be interpreted by the priests as the result of the particular mood or whim of one of these gods. They could be placated by offerings and sacrifices. Although these deities were considered immortal, their supposed conduct was anything but divine. They were depicted as often fighting among themselves, full of petty envies and lusts and subject to hunger and even death.
A few centuries later the Babylonians conquered the Sumerians and modified these myths to exalt their own civilization. Now it was the Babylonian god Marduk who was in charge; he formed the heavens and earth by killing a female god, Tiamat. According to the Babylonian creation account:
"The god Apsu and the goddess Tiamat made other gods. Later Apsu became distressed with these gods and tried to kill them, but instead he was killed by the god Ea. Tiamat sought revenge and tried to kill Ea, but instead she was killed by Ea's son Marduk. Marduk split her body in half, and from one half he made the sky and from the other half he made the earth. Then Marduk, with Ea's aid, made mankind from the blood of another god, Kingu" (Life: How Did It Get Here?, 1985, p. 35).
Does this kind of bizarre tale bear any resemblance to the biblical account of creation? Not at all. The first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent had similar creation accounts, but the only one free of outrageous myth and with a moral and perfect God is the biblical version.
In contrast to the crude polytheistic struggles found in such ancient myths, the Genesis account is smooth, systematic, rational and-yes-scientific. Notice astrophysicist Hugh Ross's reaction on first reading the biblical account of creation: "The [Bible's] distinctives struck me immediately. It was simple, direct, and specific. I was amazed with the quantity of historical and scientific references and with the detail in them.
"It took me a whole evening just to investigate the first chapter. Instead of another bizarre creation myth, here was a journal-like record of the earth's initial conditions-correctly described from the standpoint of astrophysics and geophysics-followed by a summary of the sequence of changes through which Earth came to be inhabited by living things and ultimately by humans.
"The account was simple, elegant, and scientifically accurate. From what I understood to be the stated viewpoint of an observer on Earth's surface, both the order and the description of creation events perfectly matched the established record of nature. I was amazed" (The Creator and the Cosmos, 1993, p. 15).
Consider an admission from The Columbia History of the World: "Indeed, our best current knowledge, lacking the poetic magic of scripture, seems in a way less believable than the account in the Bible . . ." (John Garraty and Peter Gay, editors, 1972, p. 3).
It is natural to conclude, as nations gradually distanced themselves from the true Creator God and sank into immorality and polytheism, that their understanding of the creation became corrupted and eventually was used to prop up their political, social, philosophical and religious outlooks.
Vernon Blackmore and Andrew Page write: "Today the difference between Genesis and the Babylonian account is evident. The first speaks of one God creating the world and mankind by his own command; the other describes chaos and war among many gods, after which one god, Marduk, fashions humanity from clay and blood. The spiritual depth and dignity of Genesis far surpasses the polytheistic ideas of Babylon. Yet until the complete story had been reconstructed, incautious scholars talked of the Bible account being a copy of that from Babylonia. Certainly, they argued, Genesis should be consigned to the category of legend, and its writing was dated long after Moses to the time Israel was held captive in Babylon.
"Much of nineteenth-century liberalism has now been shown as excessive. The Old Testament is not a poor reflection of more ancient Babylonian or Canaanite tales. There are more differences than similarities between the texts. The opening chapters of Genesis stand unique. Nevertheless, many scholars still use the category of myth in relation to some of the biblical material" (Evolution: The Great Debate, 1989, p. 130). -
When you say much of the bible how much do you mean?? Care to clarify?Originally posted by SBS9611D:It is possible that Adam and Eve were Neanderthals.
Don't forget much of the bible is based on symbolism. THe only official records of Jewish existence dates from the time of ABraham.