Is Evolution a Radical Idea?

You tend to throw around the term liberal Christian pretty easily. I see no contradiction between science and the Christian. I believe the Bible is truthful but I just don't believe that it was ever intended to be read as a science text or a newspaper. Science is a wonderful study of God's creation in my view. I don't consider myself a liberal Christian.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I see a lot.Come to find out, there was no Fall. And if no Fall, no need for the Passion. That's Christianity in a nutshell.Why was there no Fall? Because there was evolution. Evolution and the Fall don't mix.Evolution tells us that things change gradually over time into other things. What things? All things.No need for God.

What is the fall. It is the acceptance that we have knowledge of good and evil and the ability to choose between the two. As I see it that is what a metaphorical reading of Genesis teaches at its most basic.God is a God of goodness, and when we fall short of the mark it separates us from him. In ways that I can allegorize, but not fully understand, the passion was a way of providing the vehicle of forgiveness that bridges that separation between the goodness of God and our shortcomings.Need for God. The fall and the passion are spiritual. Evolution is physical. There is no connection.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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I meant it was logically devastating to religion.

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Scientific findings are not logically devastating to Buddhism.Buddhism is a religion.Therefore, your premise that scientific findings are logically devaststing to religion is false as stated.Perhaps you'd like to narrow your premise?

I agree with you that these scientific explanations do not have God hardwired into them, so the possibilty that God did not do it, does exist.This, however, does not mean that God doesn't exist.This is only one of the possibilities.

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

All you've demonstrated by this post is that you know little about eastern religions.They are far from vague... just not as simplistic as some people seem to like.Does that make them any less valid?

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"The good Christian should beware the mathematician and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of hell." - St. Augustine

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Well, the ideas of evolutionism are very plausible, so it's not a very good straw man.

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But one of the requirements of a strawman is that it has to seem plausible, because an implausible strawman wouldn't fool anyone. Remember, the purpose of a strawman is to make you think they're attacking the real thing instead of a dummy. If instead of "evolutionism" they named their arch-enemy to be the Purple Demon and his Teletubby Minions (especially that gay one), even their most ardant followers would laugh them off the stage (or be too embarassed to ever show their faces in public again)."Evolutionism" and its attendant "evolutionists" are indeed "creation science" strawmen. And the fact that there are some people who would agree with some of the ideas and characteristics that those strawmen caricature does not in any way diminish the fact that they are indeed strawmen and are constantly employed as such in "creation science" rhetorics.

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It's just a matter of looking at the way nature works as a whole.

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Nature works the way that it works. If their theology [foolishly, in my opinion] makes definitive statements about how Nature must work in order for their religion to be true (eg, "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old, then Scripture has no meaning." John Morris at the 1986 International Conference on Creationism) and those definitive statements are contrary-to-fact (see John Morris example), then their theology is faulty and needs fixing. If they claim that their theology (which is fallible human interpretation and speculation about the supernatural) is infallible, then leave and go find yourself a more honest con to get suckered into.Apologetics is essentially the attempt to harmonize the contradictions (whether apparent or real) between one's faith and the "real world". I believe that the worst possible way to attempt harmonizing Christianity with the findings of science is to lie about the science, to deny the very existence of the physical evidence, and to claim that if any of that science is right and/or if any of that physical evidence does indeed exist, then Christianity is totally wrong. And yet that is what "creation science" does and as a result then, yeah, the way that nature works would be radically opposed to their theology. In which case, the fault does not lie within evolution, but rather within themselves.But for Christians who are able to successfully harmonize Christianity with the findings of science, there's really nothing radical about the idea of evolution. And "evolutionism" is a curiosity and a wrong idea that needs to be corrected.

In that case, maybe you should start a thread on Eastern religions, or at least one of them, and explain to me what these non-simplistic beliefs are. And then perhaps we can determine if they fit with the findings of science.

Where did you get the idea the theory of evolution explains 'the way nature works as a whole'? The theory addresses changes in living things--on this planet--over time. Many other theories exist in science that you neglected to mention: plate tectonics, Hubble's theory of the expanding universe, and Einstein's theory of relativity, just to name a few. None purport to explain 'the way nature works as a whole.'Anyway, you're talking about a scientific theory, not a manifesto. Where do you get a silly term like evolutionism? Scientists don't talk about 'evolutionism' any more than they talk about 'tectonicism' or 'expansionism' or 'relativism.' They talk about the theory of evolution.'Evolutionism' isn't a term you got from a science book. It looks like a word someone would pick up in Sunday School._Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

I was referring to those fields of science that are concerned with origins. Actually, I made it up.

You mean fields like these?Tectonics = Origins of earthquakes, volcanism, tsunamis, continents, oceans.Astronomy = Origins of solar systems, stars, planets.Relativity = Origins of nuclear energy, stars.Medicine = Origins of diseases, treatments, cures.Genetics = Origin of inherited biological traits.Biogenesis = Origin of life.Expanding Universe = Origin of just about everything.
(Run it backwards for 'Big Bang' theory.)_Edited by Archer Opterix, : HTML.

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ArcherAll species are transitional.

You mean Christ didn't really die?

Man born of woman will die.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I'll make this brief. I'm not trying to be cryptic, but I don't want to stray off topic. The Fall is an explanation of human suffering. Not only did man fall but nature fell too into what we see today. Before the Fall there were no diseases, birth defects, etc. So the Fall is necessary to justify God's ways to man.Man came late in the evolutionary process. For billions of years before that, life forms battled each other on a killing field in the pre-Fall world. This was so because life was set up in such way that the only way creatures could survive was by feeding off other life forms. What manner of God would produce such a system? A cruel God, not the God of Christianity. One might counter that our morality is subjective, so our moral judgment against God is no evidence of cruelty. But if our moral judgments are subjective, then the concept of sin is meaningless. Hence, evolution and Christianity (of the traditional sort) do not mix.

If there was no man around to consider animals slaying each other then there would be no cruelty. Cruelty begins with man. What goes before that is not. Certainly the animals do not consider eating each other as cruel. If evolution, then nothing that went before man is cruel.Its a bit like man being naked being considered shameful. It is shameful only as a result of the fall. It wasn't necessarily so beforehand.Everyone smoked in pubs in Ireland - for years. Then a law came out that said smoking was against the law. Now nobody smokes in pubs. But no-one gets worked up about it being terrible to have smoked in a pub 5 years ago. The law brings shame. No shame before it.{AbE} In other words, Christianity doesn't require that you don't bellieve in evolution. All a Christian is is a person who recognises need of a saviour and admits to God as such. I know Christians who believe in evolution, some who can't decide either way and some (like Faith) who do not. Its a woods and trees issueEdited by iano, : No reason given.