Possible to unit Darwin and Christ ?
 

Before you start complaining - I am not eager to beat that dead horse ones more. We have been there and there is no winner / loser.

No, I was thinking in a broader sense. With a little humility and open mind, would it some how be possible to unit the two teams / theories into one ? Could Darwin and Christ play in the same team, with a joint supporter club ?

As an example: Let us propose God started the whole thing (mess?) in the beginning. He made it possible for the very first life forms to evolve. From this point the natural selection postulates of Darwin come into play, perhaps with Him partly supervising and intervening at times ?

OK, I am in an exhausted, naive Friday night mode. But semi-seriously at least - what´s your take?

i think it is a simple matter of one God day = 1million human years. we just cant get the units right.

they're already united. ever see the fish with darwin inside?

Livi, you have essentially come upon my personal theory for the origin of life. If you look at things from God's perspective (or at least try to) things actually start to make sense. Here goes:

I see the Genesis story as God's attempt to explain his creation to man in a way that we can understand. Who says how long a "day" is to God? Why does a day have to be 24 hours? I would think that a day to God could be any amount of time he desired. Therefore there is plenty of time for dinosaurs to emerge and die off, humans to emerge, etc.

I do not subscribe to the idea that God made man and all the animals in 48 hours. I think evolution IS God's method of creation. The Bible says God created man in his own image...it does not say HOW he created man.

Even though Steven Hawking is staunchly anti-God, I find some striking resemblances between his theories on how the universe began and God. For example, Hawking talks about the time before the big bang. Actually time didn't apparently exist at that point so call it whatever you want. He talks about all the matter in the universe being packed into a small area, he calls it a "singularity". Hrm...a singularity which existed outside of time and space as we know it. A singularity which exists outside of the bounds of physics as we know it. A singularity from which the entire universe arose. To me, that sounds an awful lot like God...

I have read most of Dr. Hawking's books and do not see him as anti anything. Did I miss something somewhere?

I think someone can believe in science and believe in a Creator with no internal dissention. A creator will do what a Creator does, and we do not have the brainpower to comprehend.

Most reasonable minds don’t think that Darwin and Genesis contradict each other at all. Even the Pope has said this. The general idea is that Genesis is just a metaphor for what actually happened. It was never meant to be a scientific explanation of all the exact details. Darwin, or evolution, is the scientific explanation of part of the sequence (the part with life, not the part with creating the planets, day and night, etc).

However, there are those who insist on taking every word in the bible literally. They will forever believe that god created the universe in six 24 hour days.

You will never convince these people that Genesis is a metaphor and that Darwin and Genesis can co-exist without contradicting each other. Their minds are just too closed to accept that.

Can you blame him? Even as a non-scientist?

I heard livi/vash's theory a long while back in church of all places and it works for me. The people that can't accept all this are the ones I don't get... I went to the Natural History museam the other day.

They have 100 year old dinosaur models...made up of parts that a MILLIONS of years old. I can't even comprehend how long a million years is, let alone 10 million years. As an adult I was suprised about how many of the displays said "scientists believe..." * There is so much about the history of this planet that we don't know...how could we possibly expect to succently explain it within the past couple hundred years.


* The funny one for me was the 2 horned tricerotops. It's the only one they ever found. What makes me laugh is...maybe it was just a birth defect and we're all puzzled by why there isn't any others....

Anyone who believes a literal reading of the Bible has obviously never worked on a corporate report! No matter minor the report, look at the editing of it...everyone needs to get their 2 cents. Then take the bible which has been translated for 2000 years. It's a wonder it's close to the original at all.

I don't know about the Torah in the original Hebrew. Then again, that's only part of what we know as the "Bible". Don't they occasionally find "new books" that are subsequentally discredited? Yeesh.

I recently read a book on the subject that gave me a lot of food for thought...

Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution: by Kenneth R. Miller.

Mr Miller compares notes with quite a few current authors on both sides of the question.

Jack

Stephen Hawking states outright that he believes in a God...or at least he did in his first book.

Re: Possible to unit Darwin and Christ ?
 

I say why should they? If you're using the name "Darwin" to represent science or a naturalistic view of the world and "Christ" to denote a religious or supernatural view of the world, then I would submit that there is no reason to put alot of effort into trying to put forth a hypothesis that comforts the beliefs of two opposing camps. Either your hypothesis (natural vs supernatural) is correct or it's not.

IMHO, people have only elected to adopt modified versions of Genesis because the literal versions are so obviously wrong. Adopting a modified version (that somehow seems to allow "Darwin" and "Christ" to be buddies) is merely an attempt to recognize the realities of the evidence around us while clinging to the supernatural comfort blanket that religions provide.

Mike

He might believe in a god in the same way that Einstein believed in a god, but I doubt he's talking about the Christian god.

Mike

No, he is definitely not talking about any religions god, so you are definitely correct there. He merely states he believes in some creator, but does not claim to know his nature or origin.

Which is basically my view on the subject. If the theory works for the smartest man on earth, it works for me too. ;)

If you put a gun to my head and forced me to describe the nature of God, my GUESS would be that God and Mother nature are one in the same. Simply put, God is the rulebook that governs the physical universe(s).

Which, of course, begs the question:

Does God belong to any one religion?

I wonder what God has to say about those who think they are getting preferential treatment.

Actually the Dead Sea Scrolls showed the current translation of the Bible to be remarkably accurate. I think the Bible is a mixture of literal truth, allegory and metaphor. The translation survives though.

Science can and will take you to a point where theory becomes fact.
The earth is "round" and orbits the sun, for example.

Anyone who belongs to a religion that doesn't think/can't prove it is the TRUE religion is wasting their time.

If you don't believe in God and can't prove that, same boat.

KT

Yes, most people do not realize that the discovered "book of Isaiah" only has some minor spelling errors from hand copying compared to modern copies.

There is a reason why the Bible survives to this day.



KT

+1.

The difficulty I've had in accepting any organized religeon are my personal theorums:
1) If God is the almighty, how can mankind speak for him or claim to harness and use his powers?
2) If God first created the universe, and then the world, and then all the creatures within as a utopian Eden, why is mankind destroying it (hundreds of species per day in the Amazon)?
Were we predestined to populate other planets before we had trashed this one?
3) If mankind was created in the image of a male God, was it supposed to be pygmies with testicular elephantitis or Wang Zhi-zhi?
Females technically are the creators and nurturers. Just add one good cell.

We are just now learning about quarks and anti-matter and multiple forms of energy that make up the universe, so concepts like spirits and telekenesis may someday be scientifically proovable to a degree.

So, we can't believe anything until it is "proven"?

How long did it take, after people started theorizing that the earth was round, for there to be absolute proof it was indeed round?

Were the theorizers wrong in the time between when they "believed" the earth was round and the time it was proven factual?

How many things, throughout time, were thought to be a scientific "fact", only to be later debunked by new science/theory/advancement?

- Skip

The Bible noted the shape of the earth long before it was a "fact".
Nothing in the Bible has been proven to be false.
In fact, man eventually "discovers" what is contained therein as reliable in his own time.
Shouldn't this tell you something?

It never said a day is 24 hours, BTW. That is something man came up with.


KT

Man does not speak for God nor can man "harness" his powers. Anything that occurs through God is of his own will. You must be watching too much Benny Hinn...

What mankind does or does not do has nothing to do with God's original vision for Eden. God does not control man like a puppetmaster.

This is just silly. Are you purposely trying to derail the conversation? The Bible says man was created in God's image. If you take that to be a literal statement, then that is your business. No one can say what God looks like or what gender (if any) he is. I use the term "he" for God because it is a traditional reference among human culture. If you want to call him "she" or "it", be my guest. Save the images of giant testicles for the bathroom stall though, we are trying to have an adult discussion here.

KT- I may have misunderstood your first post. Now I'm thinking we're on the same side of this discussion.

edit: I just re-re-read your posts. My mistake. Sorry. :)

To support your theory, a day is not a fixed unit in time, it varies depending on your location in the solar system, galaxy, or universe.

To someone at the rim of the milky way counting days as the time it takes their star to orbit the center of the galaxy, a day would be measured in 10s of billions of years, and would be a perfectly correct measurement.

Also, doesn't the original hebrew really say "the earth was created in six periods of time". Translators picked the term "day" as a good approximation of "period of time".

All religions think they are the one TRUE religion, which makes me think that NONE of them are.

Correct.

Each "day" is not limited to any specific length of time.
We are talking about time indefinite, here.

Time we cannot describe or even understand.


KT

not true
no trees with fruit before stars were created

no world wide flood ever over topped the mountians

no high place to see the four corners of the world or all the nations at once

no stoping the sun in the sky so the battle can be won

and more then a few false Prophecies

lets take Prophecies in Isaiah

# God told Isaiah to tell Ahaz, the King of Judah, not to be concerned about Rezin (the king of Syria) or Pekah (the king of Israel). But according to 2 Chr.28:5-6 "God delivered him [Ahaz] into the hand of the king of Syria; and they smote him, and carried away a great multitude of them captives, and brought them to Damascus. And he was also delivered into the hand of the king of Israel, who smote him with a great slaughter." 7:3-7

# The King James Version mistranslates the Hebrew word "almah", which means "young woman" as "virgin". (The Hebrew word, "bethulah", means "virgin".) In addition, the young woman referred to in this verse was living at the time of the prophecy. And Jesus, of course, was called Jesus -- and is not called Emmanuel in any verse in the New Testament. 7:14

# These verses falsely predict that Babylon will never again be inhabited. 13:19-20

# Dragons will live in Babylonian palaces and satyrs will dance there. 13:21-22

# This verse prophesies that Damascus will be completely destroyed and no longer be inhabited. Yet Damascus has never been completely destroyed and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities. 17:1

# The river of Egypt (identified as the Nile in RSV) shall dry up. This has never occurred. 19:5

Assuming God is everywhere and in everything - maybe the Evolution according to Darwin is God´s creation too. Good ol´Charles merely happened to stumble on the work of God. Maybe God figured 'survival of the fittest / natural selection' to be an appropriate function on this planet.

Come to think of it - science in a broader perspective may just be God´s creations (us) back tracking and discovering His work.

Go figure..

I'm not going to debate every issue in the thread, but I do enjoy reading what is being posted.

I will say that, all the supposed contradictions can be explained in a reasonable matter.

PM's are always welcome ;)


KT

Except you never explained to me in a reasonable manner why the bible says that rabbits chew their cud...

Mike

I didn't know I was supposed to. Haha:D


KT

+ 10¹¹³... ;)

Good post!!


KT

I asked you this question in a thread months back and the answer you provided was not "reasonable".

There are many contradictions and errors in the bible. I was simply picking one of them.

Mike

Sorry?


KT

You made the statement in a thread a while back that the bible was scientifically accurate. I brought up the verse that mentions rabbits chewing their cud (they don't) and you were not able to reconcile that obvious scientific error in a reasonable manner.

Minor point, but a point nonetheless.

Mike

Interesting thread. More civil than usual.. I am not Catholic, nor to pretend to begin to understand Catholic dogma. But the last thing I read on the subject is that the Catholic Church does not take a position on the validity of evolution as proposed by Darwin and built on since. In the big picture God created every living thing - and if God used that process to get us where we are today - so be it.

The Scriptural reference to the hare as a cud chewer has frequently been doubted by some critics of the Bible. (Le 11:4,_6; De 14:7) It should not be overlooked, however, that the modern, scientific classification of what constitutes chewing of the cud provides no basis for judging what the Bible says, as such classification did not exist in the time of Moses.

Even in the 18th century, English poet William Cowper, who had at length observed his domestic rabbits, commented that they “chewed the cud all day till evening.” Linnaeus, famed naturalist of the same century, believed that rabbits chewed the cud. But it remained for others to supply more scientific data. Frenchman Morot discovered in 1882 that rabbits reingest up to 90 percent of their daily intake. Concerning the hare, Ivan T._Sanderson in a recent publication remarks: “One of the most extraordinary [habits], to our way of thinking, is their method of digestion. This is not unique to Leporids [hares, rabbits] and is now known to occur in many Rodents. When fresh green food, as opposed to desiccated [dried] winter forage, is available, the animals gobble it up voraciously and then excrete it around their home lairs in a semi-digested form. After some time this is then re-eaten, and the process may be repeated more than once. In the Common Rabbit, it appears that only the fully grown adults indulge this practice.”—Living Mammals of the World, 1955, p. 114


KT

I believe threats of eternal damnation and prayers for divine assistence and intervention is, and has been throughout time, the fundamental core of many theologys- Christianity foremost.

The principle core of Christianity is that man sinned through the apple of knowledge, was thrown out of paradise, and man must spend a lifetime regaining that paradise.
If Eden was Gods creation and gift to mankind, then by that definition destroying nature is destroying God.

Sorry, the reference was cheeky, but was made to dispute the false premise that "humans" are any different from "animals".
-We share the bones/blood/hair/muscles and all other physical elements that comprise mammals: Ever hear of a pig heart transplant because of genetic compatability?
-We share the common actions of other animals: Maternal instinct, hierarchial competition, tool usage, verbal and unspoken language, and even(gasp) higher concepts such as mourning of the dead.
-If one put an upright chimpanzee and an exceptionally hirsuite retarded midget side-by-side, there would be little to identify as "unique", except perhaps a larger prefrontal cortex and brainstem connection point.

God is God, an ill-defined concept of an intellegent sentient being beyond reproach or comprehension, and any man who speaks for "it" is a liar.

And again, this is not "chewing their cud". A rabbit is not a ruminant. The bible is simply wrong.

Mike

I'll go on to say that any Christian that chooses their mate through a sexual selective process, or is involved in the educational selection process(school grading system), or any other selective process involving criteria is, in fact, participating in Darwinism.