How can theists believe in Darwinian evolution?

Good post Granny. I can appreciate your logic in the post and see where you are coming from but I'll differ on one point with you. Once one gets past, generally the Babel incident in Genesis, the following pages of Genesis recount the early history of the nation of Isreal, beginning with God's selection of Abraham as the "father" of the new nation.Few conservative scholars would deny the historicity of these later events within the [/b]exact[b] same book of the Bible. Yet many regard the language used in the creation account as a form of ancient Hebrew poetry, even though in reality the genre throughout the first eleven chapters of Genesis is NO different to that used in the later chapters.There is only one, maybe two books in the Bible that don't use the same form of writing throughout...Daniel and Revelation and there would probably be NO debate to this either...from either side.So while I do agree with your premise, I don't believe it applies to the first 11 chapters of Gen. If it does, the argument will hold much more water if you can provide Scriptural evidence for this.

Except of course the creation tales are factually wrong, there is positive overwhelming evidence that the Noahic flood never happened, there is no evidence that the Exodus happened and lots of evidence that it too is simply fable, near absolute proof that the conquest of Canaan never happened as described in Joshuah...Where there is positive evidence that something did not happen it is hard to imagine how any Christian can continue to treat those events as historical.The same applies to Evolution. I cannot imagine how anyone could possible not accept Evolution as a well established fact.As Bishop Sims said in his Pastoral letter back in the early 80s:

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

kbertsche, I agree with your assessment of Paul and his writing but given that, do you discount the quotes of Christ and Peter who wrote in the same language and traditions as Paul?? Christ himself said,For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. 38 "For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah R915 entered the ark, 39 and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away;or Peter:3 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, 4 and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." 5 For when they maintain this, it escapes their notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, 6 through which the world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. 7 But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.So is Paul's history then in your opinion and Peter and Christ allegory (again)???The problem a TE will have with the Peter passage is one, either it is allegory and he's not referring to final damnation of mankind, which even most TE would not say he meant (most would agree with the end result of what Peter was saying) or two, he's telling us the truth in both cases...the world was destroyed by a world wide catastrophic flood AND the world will be destroyed by fire in the final judgment.I can use the same example with Sodom from Christ's own words in Matthew.Anyhow, there is another thread here where Herectic, who I have little in common with, understands my line of argument. Christ, Paul, Peter, ect reference the history of creation and the flood more then once....so in your case of the resurrection, you agree it's history that was written (whether faulty history or not) yet these same writers spoke in hidden mythological statements that we waited almost 2,000 years for science to unlock??? hmmmmmmm, doesn't seem logical to me.

Few conservative scholars. There is no shortage of historians or archaeologists who dispute the various biblical histories. That simply isn't true. Genesis is the work of multiple authors, at least four. They all have different agendas, they use different terms for God, they see and portray God in different ways. This is why some texts have contradictions in them; like the separate creation accounts in Genesis 1 as compared to 2&3. That is probably beyond the scope of this thread. I think you should read up on the Documentary Hypothesis though. here are a couple of links on the subject, one discussing the thinking and history behind the DH and another showing a proposed breakdown of Genesis by author.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

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Darwin himself didn't really hold that view:

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We have also seen that, as the specialisation of parts is an advantage to each being, so natural selection will tend to render the organisation of each being more specialised and perfect, and in this sense higher; not but that it may leave many creatures with simple and unimproved structures fitted for simple conditions of life, and in some cases will even degrade or simplify the organisation, yet leaving such degraded beings better fitted for their new walks of life.

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Sorry; perhaps I misspoke or over-spoke. As your quote shows, Darwin believed that evolution tended to produce "higher" or "better" organisms, and to generally go "upward." Didn't he also claim (numerous times) that the British upper class was the pinnacle of evolution? And isn't this sort of value judgment in comparing organisms generally avoided today?

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kbertsche, I agree with your assessment of Paul and his writing but given that, do you discount the quotes of Christ and Peter who wrote in the same language and traditions as Paul?? Christ himself said,
For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. 38 "For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah R915 entered the ark, 39 and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away;

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Good questions. A full response would probably pull us off-topic, but I'll try to reply briefly.In the Mt 24 passage, Jesus is trying to describe His second coming in terms that His audience would understand. So He uses the analogy of Noah, a story which they knew. This is similar to a modern-day preacher using an illustration from a current movie. The illustration works equally well whether the movie is a documentary or fiction.Likewise with Peter in the 2Pet. 3 passage; the illustration works whether or not the Flood was literal. But notice that Peter claims that the earth was formed "out of water and by water" (2 Pet 3:5). This is probably not referring to Noah's Flood, but to Gen 1 (nowhere in the Flood account is the Flood said to "form" the earth; this happened in Gen 1:2ff). 2 Pet 3:5-6 seems to fit better with the out-of-favor "Gap Theory" perspective, where the world was destroyed between Gen 1:1 and Gen 1:2, and then re-formed from the waters.Another theological difficulty for TE is Rom 5, where Jesus is presentede as the "second Adam", analogous to the first Adam. Some TEs believe in a literal Adam because of this, while others reconcile this with Adam as an archetype or as a symbol of "everyman."If you really want to investigate these areas, you should probably read some evangelical theologians who hold to TE. I would suggest Alister McGrath or George Murphy . Or maybe Bruce Waltke, who may not be exactly a TE, but is open to the position.

Any scholar worthy of the title would deny the historicity of the events in Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, 1-2 Samual, and even 1-2 Kings, 1-2 Chronicles - OR AT THE VERY LEAST, admit that there is no evidence for these events.By all means take these events on faith, but do not be deluded into thinking that any pre-captivity events mentioned in the Bible have any solid foundation in Biblical archaeology what-so-ever.As a Christian, I was appalled when I discovered this: that I had been lied to and misled through countless Bible-studies and sermons. And I learnt this through the BAR (Biblical Archaeological Review) - an *evangelical* Christian publication that is still full of pro-Christian bias but has at least the guts to describe the archaeological situation as it is.It didn't shake my faith at the time - it actually excited me that there was so much to discover (as none of it had yet been discovered!) but it made me realise just how much self-deception is rampant amongst evangelicals.Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

In which he appears to have been right. But as my quotes also show, he also understood his own principles --- the essential tendency of evolution is towards adaptation to the environment, not a drive towards being "higher", a term ambiguously undefined.Darwin was a wily old bird. If you read what he wrote, you can see that he dotted his Is and crossed his Ts. Indeed, ideas which have been put up in the last half-century (such as punctuated equilibrium and neutralism) as "challenges to the dominant neo-Darwinian paradigm" all turn out to be in the Origin Of Species, if you look. He was a clever man, and it's not his fault if his actual ideas got oversimplified, both by friends and foes, into a "Darwinism" that he himself shot down in 1859. If he claimed that "numerous times", then maybe you could quote him doing so once or twice. His paeans to "the British upper class" must have passed me by.Perhaps you are confused by the term "Social Darwinism", a doctrine which Darwin explicitly rejected. One does ones best. For example, when I write the phrase ""higher" organisms", I put "higher" in quotes. But you know what I mean.I seem to remember reading a note Darwin made in his notebooks saying never to use such terms --- but a quick look through OoS shows that he didn't always fulfill his resolution. It's just such a natural way of speaking, even today. And after all, if I said "more basal" and "more derived" --- well, what's "basal" Latin for, eh?Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

Cavediver,I think you misinterepreted what I was saying when I said "historicity of these later events"....many TE will believe historically what can be verified and rightfully so, as you probably do also, and I. My point was that it's the style of writing which is the same for both the verified and unverified....that doesn't necessarily make Gen 1-11 automatically history right off the bat but it does pretty much shoot down the theory that it's poetry, especially when you look at Hebrew poetry, which is nothing like the writings of Gen 1-11.

But Genesis has at least 4 different authors. Some of it therefore can be poetry, while other things may not be. Genesis is not from a single source, therefore pointing out that certain parts of it are taken as poetry, and other parts not doesn not help you. You'd have to show that the poetry parts are written in the smae manner and style and by the same author as the non-poetry parts. Also, something being allegory does not mean it is poetry (I think).

While this whole discussion is all very interesting perhaps, to those who wish to know about biblical accuracies and the like-oddly, it has virtually nothing to do with the question I have asked about.So shall we continue? Now, I see that Jar has his own unique brand of religious faith, so for the purposes of discussion perhaps we should refer to that as ChristJARinity, or something similar, because although fascinating, it really has nothing to do with Christianity, and furthermore has nothing in common with those who hold a believe in a special human connection between a God, possesion of a soul and an orderly God inspired world (since he believes in none of that), while at the same time believing that all of life is random, and a purely naturalistic event, with nothing ordained, nor guided, nor organized in any way.THOSE were the people I was referring to. Do any of those people exist on this forum, that might wish to expand on how they arrived at this dualistic faith?

Boulder,I basically tried to lay out what a Christian is from the Bible itself but when you do that you get accused of the ole "no true scotsman" logic. If I can't quote Christ himself to define what a Christian is, and we can't get agreement here on it, then the discussion is pointless.In a nutshell though, I'm in partial agreement with your OP in that I'm sometimes mindboggled what some Christians (yes, I said Christians) believe.....Huntard (and others who have said the same thing), care to site sources for the four authors of Genesis. Christ only quoted Moses....(I understand that in and of itself doesn't rule out multiple authors).

Feel free to reply to my posts.In your own time. No pressure.

Granny Magda gave a good link in Message 64, but here it is again: Documentary Hypothesis He quoted the Pentateuch, but those were all written by different authors, as the link shows.

You are a self-professed atheist, so it seems unlikely you can give much insight into the minds of those who believe in a disordered world, while at the same believing in an ordered connection between man and God.