Evolution is not an opinion

[FunkyBunch]

You HAVE separated the two things in your mind. Why can't evolution be purposefully driven by God or even by itself? Just because your personal beliefs preclude evolution from having a purpose or human beings as a by product of evolution have no purpose does not mean it is that way. What if evolution is working towards a societal betterment as well as biological? The fact of the matter is, we don't know for sure how or why or 'if' evolution is/has/was happened and much like other current scientific theories I expect the Theory of Evolution to be revamped to explain more. The more we know, the more questions we ask about what we didn't know we didn't know.

If we didn't ask questions that were against personal beliefs because we don't like the possible answers we would still think the world was flat, the earth was the center of the universe etc. Most scientific discoveries have been considered heresy by the "church" over the years. Further if exploring the possibility/pathways of evolution we find out we were created would it matter to you? If you believe in God, which I assume you do, you have to believe he gave us an inherent desire to learn since that's what we do. What if God put this evolutionary puzzle here for us?

Again, you seem afraid to ask the questions because you MAY not like the answers. Habakkuk is an example of an old testament prophet who asked hard questions, even though he knew he wasn't going to like the answers. Why is evolution so different?

[JoleneandJoel]

I have asked the hard questions and I'll explain how I came to my conclusion that the God of the bible created the world in 6 days as the truth. I discovered that both evolution and creation can never be proven because they both have a way out of arguments. Creation has God, and God is capable of anything. So any hard argument leaves the response, God did it and God can do anything. Evolutionists have endless time. living material can not come from non living material. Yet they say well if you give it millions or billions of years it can happen. Any time you ask them a hard question they throw in millions of years and then it's supposed to suddenly make sense. I discovered that if creation happened as the way it is told in the Bible, then science can not explain it. It defies science that a being can create out of nothing. Yes I see evidence of an old earth, however as the bible describes creation you will notice something. It was created mature.(Ocean teeming with creatures, Adult humans and animals ect.) If you showed up on day 8, you could prove that the earth was at least a few thousand years old. And I the lunatic would have to disagree with you. I realize that my beliefs don't align with scientific evidence. My belief is in a higher power that created the world by miraculous means.(Means which defy science). I believe that it is our sin that has resulted in a world that is suffering. I believe that the world was created perfect and has been declining ever since. Not in a world that started as a lava mudpit and has gotten better ever since.

[FunkyBunch]

So then, you think God made everything start old and put hints on the planet just and gave humans the drive to learn just to confuse people? While I don't believe God is impossible and am of the opinion that it's more probable that God exists than God not existing, I don't think He would deliberately misdirect us. That seems rather contrary to everything the Bible has said about him.

[JoleneandJoel]

I don't think it is a misdirection. He told us how he created the earth and that he made it mature rather than get things started and wait for things to randomly develop. If you can believe in a being that is so powerful he can start the process of evolution and then either direct it or wait for things to happen, why can't you go one step further and say perhaps he is then strong enough to make things mature in the first place.
Why does God leave the possibility of evolution? God gave us a free will. He did this because he doesn't want robots on earth who have to love him. He wants us to love him out of our own free will. The only way that is possible is if there is the possibility to reject him. Evolution is that possibility. If he revealed himself to us in science, and science showed the undeniable fact that God exists then we wouldn't have a choice anymore. God requires faith. Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.(Hebrews 11)

[zzontar]

It seems strange that through evolution, natural selection would place the one creature that is destroying the planet like cancer as the most evolved. We are also the only creature that can willfully turn things around to save the planet for future generations (survival of the species) by not having kids, spending money on improving the world instead of on war, etc. yet refuse to collectively keep the state of the planet from going into a downward spiral. Wouldn't this go against the purpose of evolution much like cancer being the most evolved organism?

[FunkyBunch]

I don't think it is a misdirection. He told us how he created the earth and that he made it mature rather than get things started and wait for things to randomly develop. If you can believe in a being that is so powerful he can start the process of evolution and then either direct it or wait for things to happen, why can't you go one step further and say perhaps he is then strong enough to make things mature in the first place.
Why does God leave the possibility of evolution? God gave us a free will. He did this because he doesn't want robots on earth who have to love him. He wants us to love him out of our own free will. The only way that is possible is if there is the possibility to reject him. Evolution is that possibility. If he revealed himself to us in science, and science showed the undeniable fact that God exists then we wouldn't have a choice anymore. God requires faith. Faith is being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see.(Hebrews 11)

You're saying that God gives you two options:

1) Explore the world around you and try and determine how things work but then you're not allowed to believe in God.

2)Reject the facts and information God put here and believe in God.

Neither of those options make any sense at all. Just because we find out more and more about how things work, does not mean we reject God. Evolution is not an idol all by itself, no where in the Bible does it say by guessing and using the brain God gave you can't have faith. Given the following scenario, what do you think would happen?

If someone devoutly believed that God started the Big Bang and thereby created the universe and caused evolution to happen on our planet and that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that he died for our sins and 'asked forgiveness for his sins' do think he would go to hell?

[Nebula]

It seems strange that through evolution, natural selection would place the one creature that is destroying the planet like cancer as the most evolved.

If you believe in god, isn't that exactly what god did? Didn't he create us, the most evolved creature, that ended up screwing everything up?

[zzontar]

It seems strange that through evolution, natural selection would place the one creature that is destroying the planet like cancer as the most evolved.

If you believe in god, isn't that exactly what god did? Didn't he create us, the most evolved creature, that ended up screwing everything up?

Redirecting a question with another question... Evolution dictates that a species that is aggressive and would horde as much food as possible would likely be the candidate to survive over one that was passive and meek, yet it is greed and aggression that will also most likely destroy the Earth as we know it... perhaps that is why the meek should inherit the Earth. Without the old good and evil battle the evolution of man would be much different... because when evil becomes the majority it collapses on itself, perhaps it will not be people as a species per se but evil itself that will screw things up, basically culling itself and leaving "good" so to speak to survive,as a species that is "good" will last much longer than a species that does "evil" ... this would be an evolutionary aspect as well.

[Nebula]

It seems strange that through evolution, natural selection would place the one creature that is destroying the planet like cancer as the most evolved.

If you believe in god, isn't that exactly what god did? Didn't he create us, the most evolved creature, that ended up screwing everything up?

Redirecting a question with another question...

I'm just saying... You think it's strange that evolution created us screwups, but you don't think its strange god created us that way.

[Mr. Personality]

How is it possible to connect purpose with evolution? I can't do it. It's not my own limitations that is preventing me from coming to that conclusion, but wrather the definition of evolution itself. That is that things change over time undirected by natural selection. That definition does not involve purpose which means that we simply made it up as human beings. We also invented the law which goes against natural selection. we protect the poor, the weak, the elderly, the disabled, and so on. Does the law slow our evolutionary development? Why is it that after we limited natural selection within the human race our development increased dramatically. (A few thousand years out of a few billion). Would we have evolved faster and better if we never introduced law? Just a few things to think about.

If God put us here, the purpose is to honour him by respecting his creations, each other, and furthering ourselves as much technologically, socially and academically as possible.

If evolution, or something else that has nothing to do with a God of some sort, put us here, the purpose is to take the opportunity given and further ouselves as much technologically, socially and academically.

In short, if we spend all our time looking back to figure out what happened, we're going to crash into a wall.

[westsidebud]

im going with evolution.simply because the bible is only so old.before christians there were greek gods,, ect ect .

[JoleneandJoel]

Evolution is considered by science to be an UNDIRECTED process. There is no way to connect God to evolution, science will not allow it. If you believe in a theistic evolution you are rejecting God's word. You are rejecting the idea of Adam and Eve and the fall into sin, you are rejecting the words of Christ who speaks about human's existing at the beginning, and you are rejecting the idea of a day of rest as it relates to the day God rested after creation.
It's simply one or the other.
If you want to believe in both replace the word God with the word aliens and be happy with that.

[Nebula]

That's your opinion, JoleneandJoel, but it is not one shared by many Christians. The Catholic church, for instance, has no problem reconciling their faith with evolution.

[JLives]

The bible, faith, gods, purpose etc. are completely irrelevant to evolution being a fact.

Most biologists speak of evolution as a fact, it is now moving into common terminolgy in the mainstream. There is overwhelming evidence from many different sources that lead us to that. The genome tree (a physical map showing excatly how each species interconnects), species existing geographically excatly where they should be if they evolved, the Nylon eating bacteria, our own abilty to drastically change animals through selective breeding in short time frame. It's not one specific thing that confirms this fact but all of it together as well as so much more...

[zzontar]

It seems strange that through evolution, natural selection would place the one creature that is destroying the planet like cancer as the most evolved.

If you believe in god, isn't that exactly what god did? Didn't he create us, the most evolved creature, that ended up screwing everything up?

Redirecting a question with another question...

I'm just saying... You think it's strange that evolution created us screwups, but you don't think its strange god created us that way.

Perhaps it would be like a parent who wants great children and has the choice of preprogrammed kids who are perfect yes sir no sir kids and say they love and respect you, but only because they were programmed to be that way and say that. I think even most people would rather have it be the real thing instead of the perfect robotic child.

I'm still a firm believer in both creation and evolution, I don't see why it would have to be one or the other.