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.

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.

Good point. What I actually had in mind was that the passion of Christ on the cross was a spiritual vehicle that provided a mechanism whereby we could be made right with God.The physical act had spiritual ramifications.

I'm not convinced one way or the other as to whether the fall occured at a specific time or not. The most convincing argument that I've heard was that Adam and Eve represented the first creatures with human spitiruality thereby making them the first creatures with the ability to know right and wrong. This would be consistent with what you are saying.However I think we would agree that only humans have a sense of right or wrong and as humans haven't been around all that long then it would follow that prior to that time morality did not exist. Once again, I see no conflict between evolution and Christianity. It isn't that moral judgements are subjective but I also don't think that sin is a black and white thing either. I believe that sin occurs when a person makes a conscious judgement that goes against the commandments of loving God and our neighbour.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

First off Robin thanks for the discussion on the fall. I hadn't considered it in those terms before.I sympathize with your point of view. To be honest I usually, when possible, will carry a bug out of the house rather than kill it. I wonder though if we don't anthropomorphize nature too much. I contend that we are the only creatures that know we will die. I'm not sure that death to animals or bugs has the same sense of tragedy that it has for us.I know that good and evil exist. I know that life exists and I believe that without God nothing would exist. I don't know what limitations or criteria that there were for creation. God didn't have to bother at all. All life dies eventually anyway and if life is eternal then does it matter that much when it happens.Not a perfect answer at all because we aren't going to have perfect answers to questions like this in this life time.I think I've said it here before, but when I move on to the next life I'm definitely going to all the lectures.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Theism tells us that God is needed. Evolution IMHO is just a part of the creation.

I accept evolution as having something to back it up, but Evolutionism has no more to back it up than Theism scientifically. Evolutionism cannot explain why there is something instead of nothing. Theism provides a much more rational answer to that question philosophically and logically in my view.(My understanding of evolutionism is evolution strictly by random chance and natural selection or in other words Atheistic evolution. Is that correct?)

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I gave my understanding of the term evolutionism in the post you replied to. (post #112)I have no problem with evolution. It is when people go beyond evolution and use random chance as a first cause. That is not scientific.Theism as a first cause is not scientific either but in my view it is a much more rational conclusion to come to as to why there is anything.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

then you write I'm not following you Robin. I get the feeling in your first post that you agree with evolutionism, and in the 2nd post that you don't.Sorry for being slow but what is it you're trying to say?

I may be wrong but my understanding of evolutionism is that it goes beyond evolution by natural selection and proposes that random chance is the basis for all that exists. Random chance as first cause is outside the scope of the ToE. The reason that there is something rather than nothing can be one of two things. Either the Atheistic approach which uses random chance as an explanation or Theism using an external designer(s) as an explanation. In consideration of the exquisite balance that we see in the universe, and coupled with the various aspects of our consciousness, I just consider the latter to be a much more rational conclusion than the former.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I guess your use of the term evolutionism, (I hadn't realized that you had coined it), is confusing things.If evolutionism is just evolution by natural selection then I have no problem, but if you see evolutionism as providing a "first cause" the I do have a problem.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Where did that first cell come from? Where did anything come from? What is the first cause?Lotsa room for God.Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Pretty much everything that I read about space and time is that they are inextricably linked. Time is just another part of what there is. The question then of what came before an intelligent designer is meaningless because there is no before.I still maintain that gives a more rational explanation for why anything exists than anything else, but that's just my opinion and obviously not yours.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Doesn't that mean then that it came about by random chance?