Why is Evolution at odds with Christianity?

Wow thats impressive Paul, an argument that's still as wrong now as it was 200 years ago, glad to see the creationists move with the times.

Darn it! After twenty years of thinking I was a Christian, Paul's pointed out I'm not.Damn it!There was me thinking it was about following Jesus. Thinking it was about obeying His commands. But no. It's all about whether you take Genesis 1 literally.So, Paul. Suppose I take Genesis 1 literally. Of course, I now have to take many statements in Genesis 2 as being non-literal. So I've picked and chosen. Or I could take Genesis 2 literally, in which case I have to scratch my head over Genesis 1. Which do I choose? Seeing as I can't "pick and choose", how do I decide which way to go?I find "Yes there are parts of the Bible which are written in a symbolic way. Yet there is nothing in the creation account to suggest it is symbolic. !" a particulary interesting statement. You see, we have here a poetic device, including a refrain "Evening passed and morning came, that was the nth day". We have a structure of three days of preparation followed by three of infilling. We follow this up with a narrative (conflicting in the literal interpretation) about people called "man" and "mother of all", involving trees with fruit like "life" and "knowledge", and a talking snake. Now I don't know what kind of world you inhabit, but these features scream "symbolic" in letters of neon, eight feet high, to me.

Paul: Since you seem to feel so strongly about this, I would be interested to hear your comments concerning the points raised by Gracchus on this thread: A Simple Statement of Faith. He seems to be a significantly different sort of Christian than you are.

Biblical literalism is no way whatsoever a necessary foundation for a Christian. Belief in a personal relationship with god, through Jesus Christ, is required. Belief that Jesus was real and did come down to earth is required. Belief that by dying he saved our sins is required. Belief that some book holds all the truth, and all the answers, is not.

While it's true that eternal life and resurrection from the dead are central to Christianity (Paul talked about the worthlessness of the faith without eternal life), the reason someone might believe in God or Jesus without it is that it works.I know that for most people it looks like it doesn't work. Overall, Christians are not different from non-Christians (says the statistics). I'm not surprised. Jesus said his way was one the few would take, and Christianity is the many, not the few. It's no surprise Christianity has a message that doesn't work.I, on the other hand, have waited for the day when I could see people really banded together into something like Jesus and Luke (in Acts) described. People who loved one another and become one family, sharing everything.Now I've seen it, and I've tasted the delight of it, and I see the hand of God keep it going and growing.So, my answer is that one reason that people might believe without it is evidence found in a Life here on earth.

No evolution and the worship of the Bible are at odds. Making Christianity a religion based on a book is a new and obviously bad thing.

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If you found a Swiss watch in the middle of the desert and someone asked you how it got there the answer would beSOMEONE MADE IT AND PUT IT THERE. It didnt evolve all by itself.Likewise with life on our planet.

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Glad you brought this up. Try as I may, I can't find anything lacking in your logic. And the caps really help.------------------
En la tierra de ciegos, el tuerto es el Rey.

"...a being of incredible intelligence must have created it. If you found a Swiss watch in the middle of the desert and someone asked you how it got there the answer would beSOMEONE MADE IT AND PUT IT THERE."Evolution doesent say life just "was put here", nor does it attempt to do away with God. Evolution, and science for that matter, does not attempt to answer "why we are here" it only answers "how we came to be".
Why is the unknowable, that's were a God comes in.I personaly belive in a creative power in the universe, in a sort of metaphisical spiritual realm that permiates everything and of which life is a major component. Yet I don't see our phisical world as separete, but mearly a manifestation of it.But hey,m thats my idea In any case, Evolution has never said "God dosn't exist".

Mr Yaro You said that "Evolution never said that God doesnt exist" But I think you would find it hard to find an Evolutionist who is a serious Christian. I mean a Bible believing Christian. Evolution has given man the perfect excuse not to believe in God because it has come up with an alternative explanation for life. If Evolution is true (which it isnt) then God didnt make the world in 6 days or didnt make the world at all so I can throw away my Bible.Perfect for someone who doesnt want to face their creator.But if the God of the Bible is true then what he says in the Bible must be true(all of it ...God isnt a liar) therefore the part about him creating the world in 6 days must be true also. This doesnt fit in with evolutions far fetched explanation of life. So if the Bible is true then Evolution is not. Thats how I see it.

Mr Hambre, I would like to give you another example of the probabilitry of random mutations actually occuring. Take the human skeleton. I read somewhere that we have about 200 bones. Sounds about right. What is the chance that just 10 of these bones would miraculously (sarcasm not intended) fall into place.Mathemeticians please help me. I think it would be 1 in 512 or a 50/50 cance for 2 bones ,a one in 4 chance for 3 bones etc. Keep going with this calculation for all 200 bones and you have an incredible figure. Or you could take a 200 piece jig saw puzzle and tip it on your lounge floor hoping that all the pieces would fall into place. You could keep doing this for a long time millions of years even and I cant imagine it happening. Now we havent talked about our muscular system or our heart and lungs and nervous system or our brain yet.All incredibly complex as any scientist will tell you. Maybe we should have 10 or more people all with 200 piece puzzles each representing one feature of the human body. They all tip the pieces out simultaneously and we wait for the day that all of the puzzles form correctly at the same time. You can safely say thet it will never happen. It would take only blind faith to believe that it could happen. And yet many people mock Christians for their blind faith. Who is believing the impossible??
Now come on evolution believers. You would have to have so many more 200 piece puzzles to represent all that we see in creation the plants and animals the laws of nature that make life possible. If a human body can evolve then why cant a swiss watch?
I have a swiss watch at home which evolved from a tadpole. Do you believe me? of course you dont. That is so silly. How much more complex is a human body and yet you believe it could evolve?????
Bye for now friends

My mum's an ordained priest, does that count as a 'serious Christian'? Oh, and she's also got a PhD in Zoology, does she believe in evolution - of course she does.

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What is the chance that just 10 of these bones would miraculously (sarcasm not intended) fall into place.

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Very low, but this is a straw man. It is a misrepresentation, or more probably, a misunderstanding of the process. Organisms don't fall into place from a collection of random elements, yet this is what the argument implies. To claim so violates the blatantly obvious fact of pregnancy and childbirth. Babies don't condense out of a cloud of random elements. Babies are not formed randomly, just the opposite, hence any appeal to this kind of probability calculation is fundamentally flawed.What are the chances that ten random letters would generate a word? Pretty low, yes? Ok. This is the scenario you propose. But you have left out inheritance and natural selection. The way evolution actually works is more like the following.Generate thousands of random letter combinations, including spaces. Select those combinations that form a word. This is natural selection. In the wild, the 'words' chosen would be the ones that survive the environment-- weather, predators, in-laws... Now, generate more random letters and spaces and prepend/append them to the words already selected. This is heredity. It is important. No generation starts from scratch, except the first one-- our initially generated letter combinations. Most of the combinations you get will be nonsense. You may have had 'the' and you get 'thel' or 'sthe.' But you will also get 'they' and 'them.' Again select the combinations that form words. Do it again. And again. You will eventually get very long words.

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It would take only blind faith to believe that it could happen.

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The way you present it, yes.

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If a human body can evolve then why cant a swiss watch?

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Swiss watches don't make babies. Without reproduction there can be no evolution.

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I have a swiss watch at home which evolved from a tadpole. Do you believe me? of course you dont. That is so silly.

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Yes. It is silly. Swiss watches don't reproduce themselves.------------------
No webpage found at provided URL: www.hells-handmaiden.com

Paul N, The probability is 1. They occur. Colossal strawman. This is a misrepresentation of what evidence suggests occurs. We never zapped into existence in that way, hence your argument is logically flawed. Can swiss watches reproduce? No? It can't evolve then. Well, that was easy!Arguments of this nature are fairly easily dispatched, they produce no empirical evidence, & are logically flawed, which is why they aren't taken seriously.Mark------------------
Occam's razor is not for shaving with.

"This doesnt fit in with evolutions far fetched explanation of life. So if the Bible is true then Evolution is not. Thats how I see it."Ok... lets say evolution is far fetched (which it isn't) but we'll start from there. Let's throw it out all together and say, it dosn't exist! Now, why should I belive your Bible, if it isn't far fetvhed?Hmmmm.... so, the world was flooded, an Noah somehow made it to the amazon to get 2 toed sloths, gather up strange species of insects, captured fresh water dolphins, and came all the way back across the Atlantic to the middle east to put them on his boat. Ok... that dosn't sound far fetched.So God made man from some mud, or dust, and woman from his rib, and there were talking snakes and magic trees. And there is only one God, yet he referes to more than one god "in the beginning". And somehow, two people made all the races in the world when I have never seen a white couple have a black babie, ok. Hmmmm....And the world is only 8-6000 years old, despite chinese history, aztech history, aborigional history. And even after the world was flooded and everyone killd, somehow all the civilizations that existed before the flood survived.And the world was created in six days in a specific order, yet there are two compleatly different acounts of the order. And they are both correct and acurate. That's not silly.Your right! It makes so much sense!!!It sounds to me like the bible is pretty far fetched.

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Paul N,

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I would like to give you another example of the probabilitry of random mutations actually occuring.

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The probability is 1. They occur.

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LOL... I completely missed that!------------------
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