Nah. I'm 100% on evolution. I also have a few unanswered questions: how could a god form intelligence and a personality, futhermore the concepts of good and evil?
(to find more specifities on those questions, look a few pages back)
Hmmm I'll try... I myself am in a weird position as I'm a science major at Notre Dame so this is a topic every day.
The best shot I could give you razaki is that everything in scientific creation starts at the big bang which apparently was the beginning of the universe. And no one knows how that came about... so an explanation could be god. It could be chemical reactions I don't know. However, it is a possibility.
I was just (apparently) agreeing with the people that the two don't have to be mutually exclusive. However, if I had to choose one, it's evolution all the way.
No. No he did not. Based on your spelling skillz and lack of reasoning other than "god made every thing," I am going to assume you are a youngin' and cut you some slack.
If he created everything, then why is everything not perfect? Why are people not perfect?
As far as those who want to combine the existence of a god and evolution, it's been done. Most of the Ancients (Aristotle, Plato, Aristophanes, Anaximander, etc.) all believed in a type of "unmoved mover." You can probably find some much better explanations that I could ever come up with if you google ontological argument for god (or something like that). It's a very fallacious argument, but it works for some Christians. The idea would be that god is the first cause and started the motion of the heavens. Now god just sits and reflects on his own perfection (he's kinda stuck up). A more modern interpretation of this would be that god caused the matter of the universe to appear (the big bang) and then let the chemistry and physics go to work. Obviously full of holes and I don't buy it at all, but there it is.
Another concept of god comes from Rene Descartes. He also agreed that everything must have a cause. Since god created the universe, all aspects of creating are found in him (Descartes believed that a cause had to contain elements of the effect). This means that goodness and perfection and things like that were present in god. It's also true that some of the elements in the cause are lost when going into the effect. Consider painting a fence red; the "ultimate color red" is lost a little when mixing the paint and lost even more when it comes to painting - you can't paint the fence perfectly. In the same way, the perfection and benevolence of god has been lost through a long chain of causality. Of course, Descartes begs the question by using a presupposed definition of god and then attributing those qualities to him. But as far as god developing a personality, he doesn't have to. Things like personality are only a retrospective analysis made by humans of something. But then again, so is goodness. Hmmmm.
Sure, sorry. It also bleeped out the word anal in analysis, so I'll have to spell anaalysis wrong or something. I'm assuming the cause and effect thing makes sense? If not, I can explain that, too. Basically, Descartes is already assuming things about god because he already has a definition of what god is in his head. Begging the question is like saying "Atheists are bad because they don't believe in god." Not believing in a god is the definition of being an atheist, so you would already have to assume that not believing in a god is bad. The argument doesn't prove anything. So the last point I'm trying to make is that 1) No one actually knows what qualities god would possess and 2) ideas like "good" or "erfect" are just human words to represent human ideas. Not only that, but in order to call something good or perfect you have to already have knowledge of that thing. If you've never seen a movie, you can't say if it's good or bad because you haven't experienced it. The same should hold true for a god, but how could he have these qualities without something to compare them to? I hope that made some sense.
I was not asking how they could be logically combined; rather, how the Christian concept of Creation could be combined with evolution. Yes, they make theoretical sense, I agree.
In the eyes of science, however, we are the next step in the evolutionary process - nothing more. We're not special.
In the Bible, god supposedly breathes life INTO us, making us special - so special, he gives his life for us.
My question would be, then...how do you justify something like that when we will only be the dominant species for a relatively brief amount of time on this planet, and we, again, are just one more blip on the radar.
Ohhhh. The whole Genesis thing. All of the creationary evolutionists I know just view Genesis as a way to explain very challenging concepts to humans and likely were not divinely inspired at at all. There are several things that don't make sense in Genesis. For example, God didn't make the sun and moon until like day 3, so how were days 1 and 2 defined without a sun and moon? But you're totally right, Razaki. There doesn't seem to be a way to combine traditional creationism with evolution. I think the science is overwhelming, I mean beyond the point that this is even arguable. Trying to reject evolution is like trying to reject gravity.
Something else I was think about. Since the AIDS epidemic, we have watched as this virus has mutated itself constantly, which is why it is so hard to kill. That absolutely is evolution - adaptability and survivability.
The explanations that I always hear - and the explanations that you provided from the theistic evolutionists - strike me as a complete and total cop out...just a way to explain away something that they know they have no basis for.
Ok yes if you are going with Genesis stories I completely agree with you they are just ridiculous. I've always been told never to take the bible literally but unfortunately some people do that. However, people are afraid of not knowing things and you are right in that using the literal Bible translation as a cop out.
