Religion Evolution in Religion

[Mischief]

Many Christian denominations teach that the creation story is a simplified version of what happened, suitable to the understanding of the people of the time, and that God used evolution as a tool in creating the universe. There is nothing inconsistent in "believing in" God, a universe created by God, and evolution at the same time within such a scenario.

(Just for clarification: I do not believe that a God exists or ever did.)

 

[beancounter]

Many Christian denominations teach that the creation story is a simplified version of what happened, suitable to the understanding of the people of the time, and that God used evolution as a tool in creating the universe. There is nothing inconsistent in "believing in" God, a universe created by God, and evolution at the same time within such a scenario.



(Just for clarification: I do not believe that a God exists or ever did.)

Christian doctrin implies a god that actively participates in peoples lives. Evolution implies a hands off god that sets things in motion and then lets whatever happens happen.

In that sense they are incompatible.

 

[FortyTwo]

Christan doctrin implies a god that actively participates in peoples lives. Evolution implies a hands off god that set things in motion and then lets whatever happens happen.

In that sense they are incompatible.

Tons of people managed to be Deists when that movement was popular and still believe in a personal God.

Though I will admit, the idea of a personal God is probably the hardest thing Christians have to justify when talking about their beliefs, and I've never heard a good explanation for all the suffering in the world should it be true.

 

[beancounter]

Though I will admit, the idea of a personal God is probably the hardest thing Christians have to justify when talking about their beliefs, and I've never heard a good explanation for all the suffering in the world should it be true.

"god works in mysterious way".

It works every time...

 

[AeryFairy]

Totally agree. In the real world, if you worked as a scientist with the belief that what is true today might flip on it's head tomorrow, you couldn't do any science. You need to work with assumptions, some of them as fundamental as "if today I drop a ball and it falls, if the exact same situation happens tomorrow, I expect the same result". Even in everyday life, if you lived by that assumption, you couldn't function: why eat today, how do I know it'll stop me feeling hungry just because it did in the past? Existentialism makes sense in the abstract but is completely useless in everyday life.

It's not existentialism kind of the opposite, really - existentialism allows for logical assumptions about the world in order to build a practical philosophy. Refuting these kind of assumptions is more akin to branches of solipsism and nihilism.

 

[Mischief]

Christian doctrin implies a god that actively participates in peoples lives. Evolution implies a hands off god that sets things in motion and then lets whatever happens happen.

In that sense they are incompatible.

Not really. For example, if I have a flock of chickens, I can let them mate as they wish and let them hatch out or fail to hatch out whatever eggs they happen to hatch out, and still take a very personal and specific interest in the individuals who result.

We all live our lives in a combination of letting nature take its course and being actively involved. I'm not sure that God would need to be all one or the other, and, in fact, one of the tenets of Christian dogma is that God gave humankind freedom of choice.

 

[FortyTwo]

It's not existentialism kind of the opposite, really - existentialism allows for logical assumptions about the world in order to build a practical philosophy. Refuting these kind of assumptions is more akin to branches of solipsism and nihilism.

Yes and no.

The first rule of existentialism is that nobody knows what it actually is.

You could apply that to most branches of philosophy, anyway, even with wordmaps and such.

 

[~Wonder]

I see quite a bit of opposition to evolution in religion, so I figured I'd make a thread asking exactly why people deny evolution in their religion, and perhaps stir a bit of friendly debate.

What always bugs me about this - and remember, this is my opinion - is that the main opponents of evolution, the fundamentalist Christian groups, don't seem to understand that evolution and their God can both exist. They are not mutually exclusive.

My opinion is that Christians, and any others, who argue against evolution when it is so thoroughly proven to be common sense are blocking the progress of the human race and turning future generations against the simplest of scientific principles, and that this is needless as their beliefs can easily coexist with organic evolution as we understand it.

Thoughts?

I think you're oversimplifying it. I don't think most people have a problem with the idea of natural selection. They know that taller giraffes can reach more leaves, that the bacteria that can survive the antibiotics will reproduce, and that your friend doesn't have to outrun the hungry bear, he just has to outrun you.

However, I think that many people would/do have a problem with abiogenesis. It has yet to be proven that it can happen, let alone that it did happen. I'm not sure it really can be proven that it did happen, which means a certain level of faith is required. A lot of people don't separate the adaptation part of evolution from the origin part.

Adam and Eve could be the first two humans, the biological ancestors of all of us, the first two "true" humans recognized after their biological line had evolved to a point God considered satisfactory.

It's a stretch, I won't lie, and it's much more of a pain to try and make sense than just plain "Adam and Eve never happened," but it makes more sense than "evolution never happened."

It could also be said that if God is omnipotent, He could have created the universe, let alone Adam and Eve, with an appearance of age. It would make sense that He'd set up a suitable environment for his creations, otherwise they would've died pretty quickly. Here's more information about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis

 

[Freesia]

I think you can have both evolution and God. Evolution is what God, or Goddess, or all the gods and goddesses, used as a tool to create and form life forms on the planet.

 

[Freesia]

God made us first to be volcano/sea single celled life forms, and got bored with that and at some point made us monkeys and got bored with that too, and eventually our lineage became human. But we are only one lineage that exists on Earth.

 

[Blobbenstein]

we are part of God, and evolution is his way of exploring possibilities.....I'm not sure we'll ever know.

 

[AeryFairy]

Yes and no.

The first rule of existentialism is that nobody knows what it actually is.

You could apply that to most branches of philosophy, anyway, even with wordmaps and such.

I thought the first rule of existentialism was that we don't talk about existentialism

But, we do know what it is (why do you say that we don't?)... And, even allowing for the differences that arise between various existentialist works, none of them posit and uphold the idea that we cannot assume certain basic things about the world, and most state the opposite - that we have to make these logical assumptions in order to interact with the world.

 

[beancounter]

Not really. For example, if I have a flock of chickens, I can let them mate as they wish and let them hatch out or fail to hatch out whatever eggs they happen to hatch out, and still take a very personal and specific interest in the individuals who result.

We all live our lives in a combination of letting nature take its course and being actively involved. I'm not sure that God would need to be all one or the other, and, in fact, one of the tenets of Christian dogma is that God gave humankind freedom of choice.

In creationism, there is a guiding hand (guids don't negate free will), in evolution there is none. The two are intrinsically incompatoible.

The reason they can co-exist, is because people want them to co- exist. So they make an effort to layer on all sorts of reasoning, meaning and connections that aren't really there. And it's a slippery slope.

Because using that kind of connection logic, you could reason "big boats exist, so Noah's Ark must have existed"

 

[Mischief]

In creationism, there is a guiding hand (guids don't negate free will), in evolution there is none. The two are intrinsically incompatoible.

No, they are not. You can set a process going (for instance, combine a number of chemicals)(guiding hand), let it do its thing(evolution), and then do something with the result(guiding hand).

Examples are all around us in our daily living.

 

[beancounter]

No, they are not. You can set a process going (for instance, combine a number of chemicals)(guiding hand), let it do its thing(evolution), and then do something with the result(guiding hand).

Examples are all around us in our daily living.

Christain doctrine doesn't allow for chance or randomness..

But besides that, the mere fact that a god determines the base chemicals to use, effectively limits the potential outcome, therefor the result is not really random. In evolution, mindless chaos, randomness and chance "determine" the outcome.

 

[Mischief]

Christain doctrine doesn't allow for chance or randomness..

Not only is that's a really broad statement to make about Christian doctrine, since there are so many variations on Christian doctrine, it's simply not true.

But besides that, the mere fact that a god determines the base chemicals to use, effectively limits the potential outcome, therefor the result is not really random. In evolution, mindless chaos, randomness and chance "determine" the outcome.

I think that what you are saying is that evolution is not consistent with determinism, which I think would come as a surprise to many who believe in determinism.

 

[FortyTwo]

I think you're oversimplifying it. I don't think most people have a problem with the idea of natural selection. They know that taller giraffes can reach more leaves, that the bacteria that can survive the antibiotics will reproduce, and that your friend doesn't have to outrun the hungry bear, he just has to outrun you.

However, I think that many people would/do have a problem with abiogenesis. It has yet to be proven that it can happen, let alone that it did happen. I'm not sure it really can be proven that it did happen, which means a certain level of faith is required. A lot of people don't separate the adaptation part of evolution from the origin part.

Well, the origin of life has nothing to do with evolution. I understand that any Creationist I talk to will have differing views from me there.

And faith is not required, it is simply the prevailing hypothesis as to how life started out. We haven't proven that it happened, and we might not ever, but we have proven that it is 100% possible that it could have happened, in early-Earth conditions. Doesn't take much extrapolation to assign an explanation for life's origin to the origin of life in a time when said explanation makes perfect natural sense.

It could also be said that if God is omnipotent, He could have created the universe, let alone Adam and Eve, with an appearance of age. It would make sense that He'd set up a suitable environment for his creations, otherwise they would've died pretty quickly. Here's more information about it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphalos_hypothesis

Yeah, it also could be said, but honestly, what makes more sense: a world that looks old actually being old, or a world that looks old somehow being new? Science concerns what can be deduced from careful observation. If the Earth looks old, and the processes exist to age it, and we can observe those processes and their continual effect on the Earth happening in real-time, as well as evidence that they have happened over and over again for as long as the Earth has existed, then the Earth is probably old and was probably aged by those processes.

This takes us back to the earlier argument, that you can't really prove anything. I can't prove that there isn't a horse hovering around ten feet in the air right outside my window. You can't prove that I'm not a rogue program on your computer and an actual person. But because horses have never been observed to hover and there aren't any horses around my house anyway, and people are capable of using the internet and bringing up counterarguments on internet forums, it's more practical, and more logical, to assume - yes, assume - that there isn't a horse and I am a human being.

Because while we are assuming that the laws of nature aren't being broken, that's still less of an assumption than assuming they are, because they're proven to work and we have no reason to believe they don't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor