Friday, May 16, 2008

Ten so called dangers of theistic evolution part 2 (answering dangers 4-7)

I promised I would continue to cover the supposed ten dangers in a later post and so I shall. have received a lot of reception with my last post from young earth creationists and a few atheists. On e concern appears to be that theistic evolution is contrary to the word and I shall answer that claim.

Now onto the so called danger number four;

Danger no. 2: Loss of the Way for Finding
God

"The Bible describes man as being completely ensnared by sin after
Adam’s fall (
Romans
7:18-19
). Only those persons who realize that they are sinful and
lost will seek the Saviour who ‘came to save that which was lost’ (
Luke
19:10
).
However, evolution knows no sin in the biblical sense of
missing one’s purpose (in relation to God). Sin is made meaningless, and that is
exactly the opposite of what the Holy Spirit does—He declares sin to be sinful.
If sin is seen as a harmless evolutionary factor, then one has lost the key for
finding God, which is not resolved by adding ‘God’ to the evolutionary
scenario."


Theistic Evolutionists agree with the first paragraph; yes according to Christian theology Man is completely ensnared in sin and evolution does not help make sin meaningless, pre-human hominids may have done things which if they were human would be considered sinful, but at that time they were merely highly intelligent animals. When hominids became humans with souls and morality and a way of knowing God they were meant to act different from animals and primitive hominids, but they still did the animalistic thing and fell from grace. So they still need salvation, they still need Jesus, this by no means impedes upon the Christian doctrine of salvation.
Danger no. 5: The Doctrine of God's Incarnation is
Undermined

And why do they think this? Their reasons border on absurd;
"The incarnation of God through His Son Jesus Christ is one of the basic
teachings of the Bible. The Bible states that ‘The Word was made flesh and dwelt
among us’ (
John
1:14
), ‘Christ Jesus … was made in the likeness of men (Philippians
2:5-7
)."

OK...a young earth creationist it going to have to explain to me why theistic evolution undermines the word becoming flesh, because this makes no sense. Yes According to Christian teaching, Christ came in the flesh, and he came in the image of a man. The fact that God made the human body through millions of years of evolution has not negatively impact the fact that Christ came in human form. That is like saying; "If Adam and Eve were not Jewish then the Carnation of Christ is undermined because the bible says Jesus was Jewish."
Danger no. 6: The Biblical Basis of Jesus' Work of Redemption is
Mythologized

This is pretty self explanatory, but I will still give you the text of why they think this;

The Bible teaches that the first man’s fall into sin was a real event and that this was the direct cause of sin in the world. ‘Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned’ (Romans 5:12).
Theistic evolution does not acknowledge Adam as the first man, nor that he was created directly from ‘the dust of the ground’ by God (
Genesis 2:7). Most theistic evolutionists regard the creation account as being merely a mythical tale, albeit with some spiritual significance. However, the sinner Adam and the Saviour Jesus are linked together in the Bible—Romans 5:16-18. Thus any theological view which mythologizes Adam undermines the biblical basis of Jesus’ work of redemption.

I agree with "sin came into the world by Adam" except for the no death before sin part, I personally think Adam was a real person, most conservative Christians who believe in evolution do not say Adam wasn't a real person. He probably was a real person; he may not have been the first physical person but he was the first spiritual person definitely. I think that Adam and Eve lived in the earliest part of human history and probably are the genetic as well as spiritual ancestors of all people alive today (note this does not necessarily mean they were literally the first humans) . Thus the redemption is not mythologized and this young earth claim is baseless.
Danger no. 7: Loss of Biblical Chronology

As far as salvation is concerned that is 100% irrelevant. And as far as Biblical Chronology is concerned; lets see why they think this is the case.

The Bible provides us with a time-scale for history and this underlies a proper understanding of the Bible.

No it doesn't, it only gives us hints which we may interpret according to our own prejudices. The Genealogies probably have gaps, and there is enough scientific evidence for an old earth and universe to suggest the bible leaves a lot out, that is because the bible was not meant to convey scientific knowledge.
This time-scale includes:
--The time-scale cannot be extended
indefinitely into the past, nor into the future. There is a well-defined
beginning in
Genesis
1:1
, as well as a moment when physical time will end (Matthew
24:14
).

Once again that isn't true, and the end times presents no problem whatsoever for Theistic Evolution or Old Earth Creationism

--The total duration of creation was six days (Exodus
20:11
).

Exodus 20:11 has no chronological merit the same word for day is used as in Genesis

--The age of the universe may be estimated in terms of the genealogies
recorded in the Bible (but note that it cannot be calculated exactly). It is of
the order of several thousand years, not billions.

The geological record suggests millions of years, I think we can revise the genealogies. Besides Man has only been here for a few thousand years and the genealogies only count after Adam

--Galatians
4:4
points out the most outstanding event in the world’s history:
‘But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son.’ This
happened nearly 2,000 years ago.

Galatians 4:4 has absolutely nothing to do with the age of the earth, and yes I accept the most outstanding event in the history of the universe is yet to come.

--The return of Christ in power and glory is the greatest expected future
event.

Amen, but what the on earth does this have to do with evolution or the age of the earth?

Supporters of theistic evolution (and progressive creation) disregard the
biblically given measures of time in favour of evolutionist time-scales
involving billions of years both past and future (for which there are no
convincing physical grounds).

When it comes to biblical chronology, the measures given in the bible are conveniently flexible. we theistic evolutionists only accept the "evolutionist" timescales because God's creation declares them to be accurate, now back to you Werner.

This can lead to two errors:

Lets look at these two errors

1. Not all statements of the Bible are to be taken
seriously.

You do agree that some parts of the bible shouldn't be taken literally don't you? You know things like passages which imply geocentrism and those which would make more sense under a geocentric framework. We know well enough that these are not addressing scientific concepts eventually Christians will know that Genesis 1 is not a scientific text. Only if you go the extreme will this become a problem. The extreme is taking a position without analyzing each step rationally to make sure it was the correct position and some in between position isn't better. As long as you do this devaluing of the biblical text won't happen. And if the bible turns out to be wrong it will happen, but since I and most Christians are not convinced the Bible is false so I won't jump to that conclusion.

2. Vigilance concerning the second coming of Jesus may be lost.

Probably not, how we look at the beginning does not always define how we look at the end.

Well I only got to seven, I will finish answering the rest of them in my final post about this topic; part 3.

3 comments:

GodCreatedBrains said...

CR:

Again, I quote something you posted: You do agree that some parts of the bible shouldn't be taken literally don't you? You know things like passages which imply geocentricism and those which would make more sense under a geocentric framework. We know well enough that these are not addressing scientific concepts eventually Christians will know that Genesis 1 is not a scientific text.

What parts of the bible do you believe shouldn't be taken literally? Maybe Genesis 1 isn't a scientific text in that it doesn't deal with scientific principles or doesn't explain 'how' anything happened, but are you suggesting that it isn't true or shouldn't be believed?

Created Rationalist said...

No, simply that until science takes another turn it should be read in the same way young earth creationists are reading it.

In this case evolution is the null hypothesis, it is wrong until proven right

Created Rationalist said...

Arrgh, I meant until science takes another turn it should not be read the same way young earth creationists are reading it.