I see absolutely no problem reconciling Creation and Evolution. All we learn in studying evolution is how GOD did it.
Most often the objections I see from Christians are either the result of turning the Bible into a goddlet to be worshipped or a wilfull ignorance of both the evidence of the record GOD left us directly (the universe) and the indirect record he left us (the bible). In both cases the Christian that opposes Evolution, the old earth and the Theory of Evolution simply wilfully denies the reality of the evidence.
They are consistent though, denying both the physical evidence and what is written in the Bible itself, performing amazing feats of mental gymnastics so that they can deny the consistency of the physical evidence and ignore the inconsistencies in the bible.
In my experience they usually arrive at their position simply because they do not want to belive reality. Usually the objections have nothing to do with reality other than the problem that reality refutes what they want to believe. I often see complaints like:
no way human beings could be made in the image of God and have come up from animals;
Why? First, who really thinks that GOD is some poorly designed primate with eys built backwards, a spine that is not designed to give us adequate support, no padding on shins and funny bones, subject to Male Pattern Baldness and shingles. that is just silly. Second, nowhere does it say HOW God made man. It is every bit as reasonable to believe it was through evolution from other critters as any other means.
Made in GODs image certainly doesn't refer to these piss poor bodies we have, and to think it does is to make a mockery of GOD.
no way one man and one woman could have been the sole representatives of the human race at that point, but the entire Bible rests on that revelation, all the genealogies, the New Testament reference to Adam as the head of the human race, everything;
Yup. But that is but another of the inconsistencies of the bible. to believe there actually was one man and one woman is to ignore the other creation myth found in Genesis 1. There was a reason the folk that compiled and edited the anthology included both of the creation myths, even though they were mutually exclusive. They were included because they show two different aspects of GOD, the transcendent God of Genesis 1 and the human, personal, intimate God of Genesis 2 & 3. Neither is GOD. The myths in Genesis are but maps, reflections, stories.
no way to hold onto the Biblical explanation of death as the result of the sin of the first human beings, as death would have preceded them by millions of years;
Yup. But that is not what the bible says anyway. If death was not already part of creation there would have been no reason for the Tree of Life. Death is not the result of sin, but of living.
no way to support a belief in the Bible as the word of God because so much of it has to be falsified or explained away to fit with evolution.
Why? The bible is a history of a peoples trying to learn about GOD, trying to define Her relationship with man, man's relationship with It and man's relationship with man and all other things.
The Bible is but the Map, not the Territory.
Often the problem stems from the belief that man is somehow fallen and that once everything was different and perfect. Even GOD never made that claim.
They say that a belief in young earth and Biblical Creation doesn't compromise one's salvation but I'm not completely sure of that, since it fragments God's word to such an extent that some of the most wonderful mysterious depths of it are lost.
Aslan is not a Tame Lion
™ Version 4.2
