Evolutionary science … oh yes, and faith too

So God Himself was not as smart as the scientists, as he "merely" created all things from nothing, and how can they all explain that process again?

This just shows us what happens when one refuses to accept the truth of the word of god is without errors, and that it is fully sifficient in all that it describes!

 

Excellent Critique of Bio-Logos.

 

I try to do my part to expand at least your consideration, if even in the smallest of ways. Oh and by the way....what is that site that you are yourself constantly sharing articles and information from?

 

Not sure about Quantum since I haven't posted here regularly in a while but the approach of that website seems to be pretty straight forward. Where naturalism and supernaturalism come in conflict, they subject God to the rules of philosophical naturalism.

Whether knowingly or ignorantly, we all accept opinions ultimately derived from one of 3 basic metaphysical assumptions. Naturalism says that the material is all there is. Spiritualism says that the immaterial is all there is. Supernatualism says both are real and that they constitute a SINGLE reality interactively and mutually dependent.

Far from being "anti-science", the latter premise allows for the answer to be "an intelligent force" when the evidence suggests an intelligent force... even if that force is immaterial and more powerful than what we have directly experienced. Far from demanding "just so" answers, it allows a wider range of answers while evolution (based on naturalism/materialism) PROHIBITS completely reasonable explanations because they do not fit the "model". ONLY supernaturalism can follow any direction the facts may point.

 

Whenever there appears to be a conflict between a literal understand of the Bible and assumed 'scientific facts", they err on the side of making the Bible accomodate to those assumed facts!

 

It would help to go to the BioLogos website and read their statement of belief.

What We Believe [LINK]

1.We believe the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God. By the Holy Spirit it is the “living and active” means through which God speaks to the church today, bearing witness to God’s Son, Jesus, as the divine Logos, or Word of God.

2.We believe that God also reveals himself in and through the natural world he created, which displays his glory, eternal power, and divine nature. Properly interpreted, Scripture and nature are complementary and faithful witnesses to their common Author.

3.We believe that all people have sinned against God and are in need of salvation.

4.We believe in the historical incarnation of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man. We believe in the historical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which we are saved and reconciled to God.

5.We believe that God is directly involved in the lives of people today through acts of redemption, personal transformation, and answers to prayer.

6.We believe that God typically sustains the world using faithful, consistent processes that humans describe as "natural laws." Yet we also affirm that God works outside of natural law in supernatural events, including the miracles described in Scripture. In both natural and supernatural ways, God continues to be directly involved in creation and in human history.

7.We believe that the methods of science are an important and reliable means to investigate and describe the world God has made. In this, we stand with a long tradition of Christians for whom Christian faith and science are mutually hospitable. Therefore, we reject ideologies such as Materialism and Scientism that claim science is the sole source of knowledge and truth, that science has debunked God and religion, or that the physical world constitutes the whole of reality.

8.We believe that God created the universe, the earth, and all life over billions of years. God continues to sustain the existence and functioning of the natural world, and the cosmos continues to declare the glory of God. Therefore, we reject ideologies such as Deism that claim the universe is self-sustaining, that God is no longer active in the natural world, or that God is not active in human history.

9.We believe that the diversity and interrelation of all life on earth are best explained by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent. Thus, evolution is not in opposition to God, but a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes. Therefore, we reject ideologies that claim that evolution is a purposeless process or that evolution replaces God.

10.We believe that God created humans in biological continuity with all life on earth, but also as spiritual beings. God established a unique relationship with humanity by endowing us with his image and calling us to an elevated position within the created order.

11.We believe that conversations among Christians about controversial issues of science and faith can and must be conducted with humility, grace, honesty, and compassion as a visible sign of the Spirit’s presence in Christ’s body, the Church.

******************

What you disagree with is their hermeneutical methodology, their way of interpreting scripture.

Name-calling, saying they have a low-view of scripture without providing evidence is trolling.

Rob

 

Scott, what are you "not sure" about. I do my very best to be honest. I do not hide anything with intention. I do not appreciate how some conduct drive by's (not labeling you as such). I enjoy and appreciate the Biologos "folk" and the contributions they make in the science and faith debate.

I think you might not be reading the principles of Biologos completely correct. There is a small group within TE that does hold to evolution as a completely naturalistic process, I would not be in that small group. I am in the group that holds to evolution as the means and method for the growth and development of life, even human life. Whether anyone agrees with me or not, I see the creation of life through evolutionary means EVERY BIT as awesome and magnificent as the one who holds to a YEC "special creation" of humanity model.
Please feel free to ask me if you have "uncertainties".

 

I am acknowledging that I do not know what you believe specifically or any of your history. I didn't accuse you of hiding anything... I just acknowledged in part that I had made no attempt to "find" anything....:thumbsup:

As true as that may be, you must dismiss an account in the Bible of creation that is written as a history, not an allegory. You must ignore references in the NT to direct creation or carve out exceptions in evolution for them. For instance back when I posted here a good bit, someone argued that only man was a "special creation" and that man was created recently while the rest of creation had evolved to get ready for man.

Romans 8 clearly attaches the corruption in creation to man's sin and the redemption of nature to the coming glorification of the saints. The natural history account given by evolution is full of death, struggle, and destruction. That is contrary to the Bible's claims. Romans 5 explicitly says that death entered with sin.

The sin of Adam and Eve is central to the redemptive plan laid out in the Bible... evolution dismisses the notion of a literal Adam and Eve created directly by God.

I am sure you have spelled out what you believe so I apologize if this seems like a challenge to you. I am just laying out where I break with those who try to argue TE. Too many things cannot be reconciled leaving a person the choice of believing the Bible or believing evolution... and all too often people choose the latter while performing all sorts of mental gymnastics trying to claim they didn't.

 

FWIW, I am not exactly sure how "old" the earth is outside of what the Bible suggests... and I think that could extend to well over 6,000 years but not millions much less billions.

I believe the necessity for long ages ends IF you do not require that simple forms evolved into more complex forms. This is an absolute pillar for evolution... and it has not been successfully observed nor has experiment been able to reproduce it. Accumulated mutations result in extinction... not new biological systems.

IMO, a far more "reasonable" explanation of "evolution" is that God created perfect archetypes that were genetically pure and robust. Speciation occurred as those original "kinds" adapted with some genetic codes reinforced and others eventually deleted. Mutations are copying errors and evidence of the corruption brought to creation by sin. They are seldom and only incidentally "beneficial" (like bugs whose mutations protect them from a certain insecticide). They NEVER result in a strengthening or diversification of the genome in a truly upward direction.

I think some are taking a much more in depth approach to this called "Baraminology" (sp?). Of course evolutionists dismiss it with a wave of the hand but it seems to fit the evidence at least as well or better AND can readily be repeated in a lab or observed in nature.

 

Scot, I think (perhaps incorrectly) that you are making the assumption or premise that evolutionary thought was the driver for thinking of the earth and creation as very old (much older than once thought). I am not convinced that was the case. These two streams of thought, both of which has some vestiges very long ago, even among the Greeks. As for slightly more "modern" times, both tributaries of science seemed to develop near to one another in time.

 

No. But I DO think that evolution REQUIRES a belief in a very old creation... and not simply because that's the only reasonable explanation for the data used to determine the age of the universe. Whether or not long ages were created to accommodate TOE or not... TOE STILL requires them to tell a compelling story. Anything that suggests a young universe or upsets the old universe narrative is ignored, suppressed, or called an anomaly for explanation later... but later almost never comes.

Evolution's story has MASSIVE holes in it. The solution was to put time, selective departures from uniformitarianism, and hope in those holes. Please don't be offended. Leading evolutionary thinkers have suggested the same thing while continuing to believe in evolution. Evolutionists complain about "God in the gaps"... while handwaving the even more critical holes in their story.

Cosmology can be taken as a completely different "story" as evolution depending on whether you believe the creation account deals only with God's direct action on the earth or if you think it necessarily includes everything in the physical realm. Evolution otoh is incongruent with scriptures relating to the story of life on Earth told throughout scripture. The effort to merge the two ideas requires that one or the other be wrapped around the other... one must be compromised. If sufficient compromises are made to evolution to make it fit scripture, there remains few if any reasons to hold on to TOE at all.