Theistic Evolution

[classical_hero]

So you believe it because it makes you comfortable?

I asked you earlier why you think the bible is the word of god.

I must have missed the earlier question, sorry.
Because the Bible says so.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17 That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.

Matthew 5:18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Matthew 24:35 Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

There are 413 occurances throughout the Old Testament of this exact phrase: "Thus saith the LORD."

The fact that the Bible exists today is a good reason to believe that because there is not writings like the Bible that have existed for thousands of years written over a time period. The preservation of the Bible over such a long time period is basically miraculous because there have been many times in history where the Bible should have ben eradicated, but it did not do so. Why this has happened leaves me to believe that there are divine forces protecting the Bible from being destroyed.

 

[warpus]

This is the crux of the issue. Basically the Bible says that we were created for a purpose and such we are a special creation of God and as such he has done things for us. Whereas evolution says that we are basically animals and that we are nothing special. I know what I would rather believe.

I would rather believe that I've been created for a specific purpose and that humanity is super-special as well, but there comes a time when you've got to forget your fantasies and face reality.

 

[ironduck]

The fact that the Bible exists today is a good reason to believe that because there is not writings like the Bible that have existed for thousands of years written over a time period. The preservation of the Bible over such a long time period is basically miraculous because there have been many times in history where the Bible should have ben eradicated, but it did not do so. Why this has happened leaves me to believe that there are divine forces protecting the Bible from being destroyed.

What about all the other religions that have survived for a long time? Why single out this one?

Other writings have survived just as long and aren't even religions (so they don't have countless followers to carry on the scriptures), for instance the Illiad and the Odyssey.

Your entire belief in the bible lies on the fact that it's old?

 

[brennan]

The fact that the Bible exists today is a good reason to believe that because there is not writings like the Bible that have existed for thousands of years written over a time period. The preservation of the Bible over such a long time period is basically miraculous because there have been many times in history where the Bible should have ben eradicated, but it did not do so. Why this has happened leaves me to believe that there are divine forces protecting the Bible from being destroyed.

Isn't 'the Bible' just a load of reconstituted Jewish texts though?

If being old is all it takes:

many historians regard the Vedas as some of the oldest surviving texts in the world, they estimate them to have been written down between 2500 and 500 BCE.

Edit: good call on the Homeric texts - I was going to suggest the Epic of Gilgamesh - but it doesn't fit 'cos it's incomplete.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Let me explain myself. I have seen both atheists and Christians (not so much other religions, but I do remember they exist) accuse each other of unduly praising or denigrating humanity.

Atheist: "Christians are always putting down the human race. You go around saying we are inherently weak and sinful and depend on God for salvation. Any salvation we get will come from humans!" (I have seen this argument a lot from a certain enemy ace . . .)
Christian: "You are praising humanity too much. You seem to think that human wisdom alone will explain the universe, or that humans are capable of solving all our problems through our own understanding."

Atheist: "You make humans too important. You act like we are the greatest thing in creation, that the universe was created for us alone."
Christian: "You are denigrating humanity. You act like we are just another random creation with no more meaning than bacteria."

And I disagree with all 4 viewpoints. After all, one viewpoint is not inherently better than another just because it is more optimistic, or more pessemistic. What matters is reality. If we really were created by God, then Christians are right in saying that we are important in the grand scheme of things. And if there is no creative force beyond the laws of physics, then we really are of no more significance than bacteria, or a supernova. Less, even. But these perspectives have to be judged on how well they conform to reality, not how they make us feel better or worse about ourselves.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

And @c_h: saying that you believe in the Bible because it says it's true isn't good enough. Of course it says it (by which I mean those specific books, not the Bible in general) is true, that's what it would say anyways. The Qur'an and the Book of Mormon both say they are true, but you don't believe either of them.

 

[El_Machinae]

Wow. He uses the same argument for the Bible that he uses against evolution. It's too unlikely to have happened by chance...

 

[El_Machinae]

about inherant sin; do religious people consider this to be around still, or absolved by jesus?

Paul let us know that we're still all sinners. Of course, he contradicts Jesus in other areas.

C_H; so, in that Timothy quotation, you know what Paul was referring to when he wrote the world "scripture", then? He certainly did not mean the NT.

 

[JoeM]

Consciousness is altered by probabilistic events. This means that, until these events take place, all consciousness is in potential.

Right, okay.

Now let's assume, just for arguements sake, that I don't know what you're talking about...

What probabalistic events? How is consciousness altered by them? Where is consciousness before these events, and how do they bring consciousness into being?

Are you talking about pre-birth consciousness, or right-now consciousness.

See what I mean about not knowing what you're talking about?

 

[Stile]

Paul let us know that we're still all sinners. Of course, he contradicts Jesus in other areas.

That'd be tough to do since he got his information through revelation from Jesus. I'm sure you must have some areas in mind.

 

[El_Machinae]

Sorry, you're right. The writings of Paul contradict the purported teachings of Jesus. The texts contradict each other. There's no proof, of course, that Paul contradicts Jesus directly.

JoeM: if you drop a cup, your consciouness will be altered whether or not a cup hits your foot - before it hits, there are two 'you' (the person who will pick up a cup, and the person who will clutch his foot it pain).

Now, the cup hitting your foot is not an entirely probabilitistic event, but there are many stages in life where something will happen due to random events. Whether or not the event occurs changes the person you'll be afterward.

 

[JoeM]

I understand probability and existance in potentia, but how does this apply to consciousness?

Why is my consciousness altered by a falling cup? I am conscious whether it falls or not. Are you talking about the process of perception?

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't think the consciousness is altered, but the 'you' certainly is, isn't it?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the concept though, Aneeshm should get it better. I think I've clarified what I think he meant.

 

[brennan]

JoeM: if you drop a cup, your consciouness will be altered whether or not a cup hits your foot - before it hits, there are two 'you'

Aaaargh! Have you been reading Schrodinger's Cat?

 

[MrCynical]

That humans are inherently sinners due to the actions of Adam and Eve is not to condemn a person for something they didn't do, but to show why we do what we do. In the eyes of God we are all sinners by nature and in need of redemption. It's not an insult to humans, because it's mostly descriptive in nature. Calling a pig foul smelling is not an insult to pigs, but is merely descriptive relative to my olfactory.

This analogy works OK if you take it to mean that humans are very likely to sin (true), but not if you consider them to already have sinned at birth. The problem I have is that this "original sin" which some insist humans are born with is used by some as justification for all evil in the world, in particular the death of infants. The idea is often presented that they deserved t die because of the actions of their ancestors, which is an idea I utterly reject (and indeed is contradictory to the passage of the Bible you linked to). To state that humans have a habit of sinning I have no problems with, but to consider humans are inherently sinners, or indeed that the sins of Adam and Eve are of any relevance to the treatment of humans I reject, but yet I see this idea thrown around all too often.

The fact that the Bible exists today is a good reason to believe that because there is not writings like the Bible that have existed for thousands of years written over a time period. The preservation of the Bible over such a long time period is basically miraculous because there have been many times in history where the Bible should have ben eradicated, but it did not do so. Why this has happened leaves me to believe that there are divine forces protecting the Bible from being destroyed.

The Bible is not unique in surviving from this time period, as has been pointed out. We cannot even be certain it is complete. Certainly due to it's disjointed nature there are many books of the Bible which could be removed without it being obvious they were missing, so we have no real way to tell if there are missing components. In any case the Bible is not really a single entity, but a loose collection of smaller writings selected from a much larger pool by humans, made many centuries after the earliest surviving parts were written. If there are divine forces at work protecting the Bible from destruction (there seems no real evidence for this), they definitely do not protect from mistranslation. While in more recent times the blatant translation and copying errors are generally spotted very rapidly, they do give an idea of what can go wrong. There was the famous edition printed in the 17th century where they managed to omit the crucial word "not" from one of the ten commandments so it read "Thou shalt commit adultery". Prior to mass production of Bibles these errors would have been harder to catch, and by definition we only know of those that were found.

 

[Markus6]

The core believe of christianity is that people have an eternal soul.

It is? I'd agree it was a belief that some Christian's hold but by no means the core belief. Could you give me some bible passages that talk about the existence of an eternal soul? It's not even in the nicene creed. I'd say the core belief of christianity is something like John 3:16.

Humans are invariably presented as the only things of importance on Earth, and everything else, living or otherwise, is merely there to serve them.

The bible says all things are God's creation.

Genesis 1
26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground."

All though we have been given plants and animals to eat we are to rule them. To me that means to look after them.

To state that humans have a habit of sinning I have no problems with, but to consider humans are inherently sinners, or indeed that the sins of Adam and Eve are of any relevance to the treatment of humans I reject, but yet I see this idea thrown around all too often.

I reject that idea too. Jesus was fully human with (at least) one human parent, yet the bible teaches that he was sinless. That just couldn't be if there was an inherited 'original sin'.

 

[JoeM]

"Isn't 'the Bible' just a load of reconstituted Jewish texts though?"
"Aaaargh! Have you been reading Schrodinger's Cat?"
Etc.

I can't help feeling we've gone off topic a little here with people discussing the core beliefs of Christianity and why people believe in the Bible at all;

As far as I can tell the crucial point is to whether you can accept Theistic Evolution is whether you are a Bible literalist or not.

@C_H, Eran, El_ et al. Is there anyone who disagrees with this summation?

Because there a Bible literalist thread somewhere else...and if my summation is wrong I'd like to know. Cheers.

 

[brennan]

We have gone a little off-track.

Basically either you accept evolution and call yourself a 'Theistic Evolutionist' or you go the whole hog and claim the earth is 6000 years old and all the fossils drowned in the flood.

I'd agree with that.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

No, there are shades of how much evolution one accepts. There are those (like me) who accept Genesis 1 as purely allegorical/symbolic (the meaning is not found in the details) and those who see it as purely literal (thus the earth was created in 6 days), but there are also those who think the earth is more than 6000 years old, but still don't accept TENS completely, or who think that the details of Genesis 1 are accurate in some way.

 

[brennan]

In my experience people who are 'in between' are often unsure exactly what it is they believe in and turn out to have given it little thought. A couple of posts on a thread often turns them completely defensive and they stop posting.