Finding God Within Evolution

I'm really starting this topic for myself as much as a person I'm concerned about.
I know a lot of fundie christians that I once was among them in the crowd. However, after my first Biology class and a brief intro into Evolution I'm quite ready to consider myself more of an agnostic. So past the intro into this thread, I would so greatly appreciate any advice, insight, readings, or anything that could help me guide my past friends into understanding that Science is truth. I'm sure some of you evolutionists may disagree with me, but I tend to have a more theistic view about evolution, that God guided it. I may be wrong, but this is a first step for me to start thinking for myself what I believe, and I want my friends to be given a similar opportunity. So.. what I want is.
If you have any insights that I could use to show these friends that evolution and God can be mixed together, that they don't entirely contridict each other, I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Well, evolution dosn't negate god, and no one here is gonna tell you that. God is something your gonna have to find and/or disprove on your own. Now, if you mean the christian god, and a litteral biblical christian god at that, there is much on this site that argues against him.Just read some of the threads in Biblical Inerrancy.

I'm part of a community of 200 people, and we've been somewhat evolutionist for about five years. Right now, though, our whole community is looking at the evolution issue, including watching the video series "Evolution: Darwin's Dangerous Idea." You don't get more serious about God than giving up all your possessions and most of your independence to live together in the service of Christ and God.Perhaps 10% of our members believed in evolution prior to coming here, and we would have been strongly anti-evolution (except me and a couple others) five years ago. Today, though, we have a couple worried members and everyone else believes in evolution.It hasn't hurt our faith a bit. We think evolution is a much better picture of how God works than instant creation was. Does God instantly create godly people, apostles, elders, etc.? No, they evolve, and they evolve by trials and suffering. It takes time. There's an instant of entering into Christ, and that can be dramatic, but progress is, uh, progressive. It involves laying down your life and suffering.Anyway, I can recommend an awesome book called Finding Darwin's God by Keith Miller. Here's an article by Keith Miller himself that's practically a summary of the book, and here's an article on an old universe and the big bang as proposed by a Jewish commentator 800 years ago using only Genesis not science!!! They don't in any way contradict each other! Evolution only contradicts one narrow and completely untenable interpretation of Scripture by a minority of Christians.Try asking those who believe that Genesis is literal these things: Which Genesis creation account do they take literally, Genesis one, where the animals are created before men, or Genesis two, where man is created before animals and woman after? Which Biblical creation account do they take literally, Genesis One, where God spoke all things into existence, or Proverbs 8 and Genesis two, where God actually framed and made things? Or how about this one. The water that is above the firmament, which is called sky and contains the sun, moon, and stars; where is it? Does it surround the universe? Because that's the only way it can be above the firmament, since the firmament contains all the stars and thus all the galaxies.Finally, do they accept literally, as Job 37:18 says, that the sky is as hard as a hammered out metal mirror? That's what firmament literally means in Hebrew, anyway, is a hard object.I'm a believe in inspiration, by the way. I just happen to believe that the greater light to rule the day is Christ and the lesser light to rule the night is his people, knit together as one and reflecting his glory.Another great example of non-literal use of Scripture is in 1 Corinthians 9. When the law said not to muzzle an ox while it treads out grain, says Paul, do you really think God was thinking about oxen? No! He was saying that those who teach the Gospel should be able to live from the Gospel. (Please, I'm sorry to use that example. I do not believe that televangelists and other Christian speakers who are masters at extorting money from their audience are teaching or preaching the Gospel of Christ. I do believe, however, that a spiritual leader ought to be able to be supported by those he supports and teaches.)(edited to correct my UBB codes)[This message has been edited by TempTL, 02-08-2004]

Kenneth R. Miller - Finding Darwin's GodMooseOops - TL already mentioned it. So many words, so little reading ability.PS: TL still having password problems? E-mail admin@
I can't help you - AM[This message has been edited by minnemooseus, 02-08-2004]

just think of evolution as the natural process governed by physical laws by which God allowed things to get from pre-creation to now......and apply it to everything, the development of life, the universe, consciousness and keep applying it to future developmentsremember science cannot as yet discount the possibility of God as a first cause to creation all it can do is postulate that God is an uneccessary factoras an analogy think of life as being a simple computer program version 1.0 that God wrote for his rather large self built computer called the universe about 13.7 billion years ago, now if this program was capable of making self improvements in both software and hardware then......jump forward to now and what happened ???we evolved and so did the universe (let's say we are now running version 42.0 on a laptop) but God the electricity that powers the computer remained the same and outside of the self improvements made by the computer......hope that helps

Wow, I guess that means he doesn't exist, if Yaro says he's been argued against at the evc, yeah - I can really see how that would stop his resurrection. Yawn Does this mean evolution didn't happen cos I argue against it? - I like this logic, (lack thereof).Can I have a go?
- Darwin is on my ten pound notes so we didn't evolve.[This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 02-09-2004]

mike You can argue it but I have yet to see a good one from a christen or any other straight set religion. But Evolution has facts on its side

Katie,I think what everyone is getting at is this. Science should never make someone give up their spiritual life. Science tries to close in on explanations for the natural world we live in, but it stays out of the supernatural realm. Quite a few evos around here are non-believers, but quite a few are believers as well (truthlover for example). Believing that the theory of evolution explains current species diversity is not the same as denying that there is a God. One really doesn't say anything about the other.

Oh Please Your own words show your lack of intelligence.Genesis One is and overview of HOW he created. Genesis 2 is a specific of how he created man.Animals were created before man. If you read chapter two in the original hebrew text, you will see that the wording is reffering to HOW the animals were made (formed out of the dirt) NOT WHEN they were made.Again Chapter one is an overview about everything made. Chapter 2 and Prov 8 go in specifically to show you how.As far as the firmament. All you had to do was continue reading in Genesis in chapters 6-9 and you will see that there is no more water left in the firmament, it was emptied during Noah's Flood! DUH!!!!Trying reading the whole Bible and not picking and choosing what you want to read.Lastly, literalist don't take EVERYTHING in scripture literal, because not EVERYTHING was meant to be taken literal. Job is speaking in poetic language. We interpret poetry as poetry, literal as literal and symbols as symbols, take a hermenutics class before you defame the Word of God and make an ass (donkey) out of yourself.

---

"The Fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'"Creation Man

Genesis is a story written by men about how they saw creation. But should it be taken literally? No...rather I believe it should be taken metaphorically, as showing the weaknesses of Human beings. Evolution doesn't disprove God. The Bible shouldn't even be in the argument, as it is written by men. It was the science of the day...a way to explain what goes on in the world!I believe that God started the creation of the universe and everything there after. He knew what was going to happen and how things were to change and evolve. It's his way...his plan. Science doesn't disprove God, in the same way that God doesn't disprove science. God created what us humans refer to science.

---

-Patio"Which is it: Is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?"
-Friedrich Nietzsche

No offense, and I don't mean to set up an argument from authority, but I'd be willing to bet that Truthlover has been studying the Bible for about twice as long as you've been alive, assuming your post is any indication of your maturity.I just mention this to give you a chance to take a more appropriate and mature tone in your posts. Truthlover is likely to floor you under the weight of his insight and Biblical scholarhsip, if his other posts are any indication. Consider yourself lucky if he chooses to do so - you'll have recieved a wisdom far greater than any Kent Hovind, etc. has to offer you, if you're wise enough in turn to accept it. Do you have the originals? You'd be the first.Do you read Hebrew?

I just saw this post. Sorry for the late response. If this wasn't directed at me, I'd respond in Admin mode and tell you this is against forum rules. "Respect for others" is what the rules ask for, and this was totally uncalled for.Let's skip the animals and man thing in Gen 1 & 2 for now. I don't agree with you, and I can answer you, but the other issue is much easier, so we can get to Gen 1 & 2 later if you want. The sun, moon, and stars are in the firmament, and the waters are above the firmament (DUH!!!), so are you saying that waters came pouring from ABOVE the stars, sun, and moon (whatever "above" would mean in relation to them) to flood the earth?I'm kidding about the "DUH" part, but as Confucious says, "people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones." If you "read the whole Bible" as you say, you run into big problems, and the firmament is the first really, really obvious one to me. Hmm. I did, although admittedly it was just one, and I didn't get a degree or anything.And I like to think I'm one of the most avid supporters and defenders of the Word of God there is, which is why I'm so quick to point out flaws in the book his supposed followers try to replace him with.

Evolution in its purest form does nothing BUT deny GODS existense. If you believe otherwise you are one of the blind being mislead by the world views. GOD is perfect without blemish. Why do we act as if anything would be complicated for HIM. If he wanted to create the world inside the ocean which was inside a piece of apple pie in aunt jemimahs oven he could have. SO all of you scientists that think you have it all figured out try looking at realty. Evolution is a THEORY for a reason. It has ABSOLUTELY no proof. Everytime something of there gets disprooved they explain it away and come up with something new. Say, oh... rocks for example. They tell us without a shadow of a doubt that some fossil is x # of years old, but unless someone was there at the time that animal died and became the fossil they can't tell us anything. It's a joke. And when the world gets behind something and starts denying GOD or acting as if there are choices to how we react or see GOD then they are being lead by the world. ANd who was allowed to be in charge of the world. OLD SCRATCH. Read the bible people everything you need to know is right there. Don't let you arrogance get in the way of you intelegence. Be good. God Bless You All. -Jay

Jay, you're coming on a bit strong. You're making very strong assertions without knowing much about the topics you are talking about.In fact, Is a statment indicating that you may not have taken the time to know about other things.There is an awful lot that you don't know. This is often excusable since there are a lot of people pusing young earthism and they don't always get it right. Sometimes they don't know what they are talking about, sometimes they lie. It'll take you awhile to figure out which is which.May I suggest you go very slowly. First to set the background you can decide if the earth really is only a few thousand years old or not. You need the concept of 'deep time' to make some of the evolutionary ideas comprehensible.You could open a thread in this forum:
Dates and Dating
after browsing some of what is there. You will find lot's of evidence for an old earth.You would also do well to find out a bit about how science works and what a theory is. A theory is a big deal but proof isn't the word to use in conjunction with it.Try here:
Evolution is a Fact and a TheoryAfter you have some of that clearer then we can discuss the fact of evolution occuring.Only after that is clear can we begin to discuss the theory of evolution (ToE) which is the current best effort to explain how it could have occured.You could also have a look in this post as a bit of an introduction:
Message 1.Please note that most Christians and the huge majority of atheists do not argree that evolution says anything at all about Gods existance. It is only Bible literalists that say that it denys God. Why they would want to try to set science up to deny Gods existance is still a mystery to me.

Maybe you can give some reasons why you believe this. This doesn't seem true to me. I belong to a community of 200 people who live together for no other reason than to do God's will, and we all believe God created things by means of evolution. Yeah, ok. I see. But if he wanted to seed the earth with a bit of RNA and then grow all life from that RNA through means that we now understand pretty well, then he couldn't do that?I think the question "Why do we act as if anything would be complicated for HIM?" should be directed at yourself as well, don't you think? Uh, yeah. And how many Bible-readers do you get along with? One per cent? Three per cent? Maybe you're Baptist, and then you somewhat get along with about a quarter of the Bible readers around. Maybe you're Catholic, and you get along with half of them.Oh, yeah, that's right; Catholic Bible readers believe evolution is true, so you must not be one of them.Maybe you could help convince us that the Bible has everything you need to know by not disagreeing with at least 75% of the people who read the Bible, most of whom also disagree with each other. Uh, yeah.