Ship of Fools: Original Sin and the Theory of Evolution

Thread: Original Sin and the Theory of Evolution Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

On a different thread itsarumdo asked me what the new heaven and the new earth was in Christian theology and in the context of suffering and evil. Thread here.

* explained the basic Christian metanarrative as * saw it but for brevity and the point in hand will shorthand it to: God created the world and man and it was good. Something went wrong (Original Sin). Suffering and evil has existed since then and Christ came to change and heal this. But the full extent of the end of suffering and evil will only occur in the new heaven and the new earth when God will make all things right again as they were in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve knew evil.

Karl: Liberal Backslider posed this question:

quote:
Except that we now know there was no garden of Eden, no era of innocence without suffering. Humans have been killing each other, suffering, dying etc. since before they were actually humans.

Now * think that's a really interesting statement that poses a really interesting question:

Where does the original state of goodness and communion with God (without suffering - described metaphorically as the Garden of Eden) exist in the evolutionary record of us evolving from apes? Where and how does the idea of original good without suffering and the Theory of Evolution coincide?

* came across some writings of a Pope here.

quote:
Some hypotheses

In the different attempts to reconcile with Revelation the scientific theory of evolution and of polygenism, proposals valid in themselves, it must be firmly held that the dogma remains unchanged in its fullness of truth, while the theological explanation is perfected, so that it can accord better with the modern scientific and philosophical mentality.

1. One opinion, the simplest, says that at a certain moment of evolution when full consciousness was first reached, man was placed by God in a state of original justice. This, however, lasted for a very short time and Adam fell back quickly on account of his sin into the previous state. Since the state of justice was of short duration, it left no traces in palaeontology, which knows nothing of it.

This is the simplest solution, too simple in fact to convince; therefore, the problem must be studied in greater depth.

2. More acceptable is the explanation proposed by M. Labourdette which observes that man coming from evolution was constituted in the state of original justice, receiving grace and a complex of gifts, which for him was an incomparable wealth. Nothing, however, leads us to expect that through these gifts the first man would have quickly reached complete perfection in every direction. Rather, he would have been at the beginning of a tremendous progress which he would have been able to attain by means of grace and the divine gifts.

This concept of Labourdette seems natural and logical, but too general. So other hypotheses come down to more precise particulars.

3. According to another recently proposed hypothesis, humanity continued to develop not only somatically but also psychologically and intellectually. At a certain moment God offered to man, enjoying his first responsibility, a particular assistance. Because he had from birth this life of grace, he would have dominated nature, even to the point of eliminating suffering and death, by the perfect development of his person. In fact man refused this gift; but the divine plan was not to be rendered ineffective by sin, rather it would be actualized in the Redemption and in the Paschal Mystery of Christ and would be perfected in the eschatological kingdom of God.

This hypothesis does not appear contrary to the dogma; nevertheless it seems less probable in so far as it admits an original justice, which was virtual rather than actual, that is, contained in the initial help of God. The Sources of Revelation are more in favour of an original justice possessed initially and actually by man.

4. Yet another opinion says that the original justice must not be placed at the beginning but rather at the end of huma history, that is, of creation understood as a continuous evolutionary progress. It is therefore a destination which man must reach at the end of his existence by his collaboration with divine help.

The sinful state of man results, according to the opinion, not from a sin committed by a first parent at the beginning of history, but rather from the fact that man w***es to remain exactly as he is. Hence, he is opposed to the grace which urges him towards the supernatural. This opposition to grace is aggravated by the influence of the sinful world, that is, by the influence of the sin of all men.

Understood in this way, original sin consists in the impossibility of man making his way, unaided by grace, towards the end ordained by God. Besides, concupiscence tends to sever relations with God while the sin of the world, in which man lives, inclines him towards evil.

This opinion is defective in that original justice is placed not at the beginning but at the end of human existence. This does not appear very compatible with the data of Revelation. Also, the concept of original sin as sin of the world causes notable difficulties both with regard to the interpretation of Genesis 3, which is considered as a completely symbolic story, and more especially with regard to the doctrine of original sin as defined by thy Council of Trent.

The same opinion is also developed by other theologians. In it original sin consists not simply in an offence committed by our first parents at the beginning of humanity, but in the fact that all men, we ourselves included, commit the sin. Every child that is born is admitted into this sinful world and impelled by it towards evil.

This idea of original sin as the sin of the world does not seem to harmonize very well with Revelation and in particular with the Council of Trent, according to which the child is born with a guilt which is cleansed by Baptism (Session V; DS, 1513, 1515). If this sin of the world theory were true, there would be no guilt in the child to be washed away. Baptism would only serve to introduce the child into the Church. This, however, does not agree with the Council of Trent.

But * 'm interested to know how you reconcile the idea that suffering originally did not exist nor was intended by God (Garden of Eden, Original Sin) with the Theory of Evolution.

Thoughts?

[ 07. October 2014, 21:20: Message edited by: Louise ]

Posted by jrw (# 18045) on :

Somehow the idea of humanity being created 'perfect' dosen't really hold water for me. If the Adam and Eve story is to mean anything at all, it's that if we had all been handed everything on a plate from the beginning, we would more than likely have messed it all up. We don't appreciate things if we've always had them. Maybe evolution is a process of 'having to work for it'. Don't ask me what that all means in practise though. It'll be interesting to see what others think.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

* 've often seen the Adam and Eve story as about the dawning of consciousness and shame. So, animals are innocent, even though they kill and so on.

So presumably primitive hominids were innocent; but at some point, humans began to conceive of themselves, and then lost their innocence. Now they became morally conscious, and could experience shame and guilt.

However, * haven't the foggiest as to how God fits into that.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

* really appreciate the links - especially to the book by the B***0p of Durham - thanks Evensong

This theme is more or less central to the particular spiritual "wisdom" * am doing my best to put into practice. The idea is that "originally" (whatever that means), everyone knew that whatever they felt, thought, experienced was not of themselves, but was from and of God. And in that state, they experienced Love in all its various forms. They also regularly reconnected to and absorbed the divine energy that caused creation in the first place, which is made constantly available for all living things so that they can constantly renew to the fulness of their lifespan. * think it is correct to translate that energy as "holy spirit", but * 'm not completely sure, and in this spiritual arena small differences in intention and perception have a big effect on what happens. Animals and all other life still does this - they spend time each day just being in connection. But humans not - we have far too many important things to do, and have also forgotten.

* assume that this time was somewhere between us being apes and recognisable hominids. There must have been some spark, not only of creation, but also something specific to humans in which we were given free will and so became "human" as well as remaining partly animal. Or it could be that free will is one aspect granted to Earth as a planet, so we have evolution in (roughly) the way we see it and so in that case we just became "clever" enough to realise that we could decide for ourselves.

Incidentally, * think the science points to evolution as being part Mendelian and part Lamarkian, and not either one or the other. But at the moment we seem to have a Mendelian mythology in our culture, whereas the science shows epigenetics and methylation/expression of genes is just as important as the genes themselves.

My understanding of the next bit is more intuitive based on what it feels like to take that creative energy in again, and what my current experienced relationship with God is like. * think that people started to think that the thoughts were theirs, the Love was an emotion they were feeling rather than experiencing, and the power they felt was themselves rather than an expression of God through divine energy. This energy could also be considered to be the force that empowers spiritual answers to prayers to manifest in the world. They are all answered, but the answer has to have some means to step down from a spiritual realm into the physical, and it is our individual responsibility to take in the energy that performs that function. Then, when we forgot that it all came from God things started to go downhill to the point that we forgot the experience of living in God and started to just experience the world as something outside ourselves - we separated. We no longer knew that the feeling Love or the power we felt in our bodies was part of God - we maybe, if we were lucky, just thought that. But there is a vast gulf between an idea/thought and a lived experience. An embodied experience.

The task now is to reconnect. When * have a small flash occasionally of what this must be like, * get the sense that life is extremely numb, and the emotional sensual all-encompassing experience of being connected back into what we have lost would - in my present state - be overwhelming in its intensity. There are also quieter feelings that are equally important that are subject to being lost through numbness and/or the sensory cacophony of our culture, until a personal relationship with them is re-cultivated.

There are also big ramifications for free will and divine order (or not) that run through choices we make each moment of the day. Another aspect of the "fall from Grace" is that we forgot to distingu*** good from evil, forgot that we could choose, forgot how to make that distinction, and then have been left with the effect of generations of being mis-taught by people who maybe had the right idea (maybe not), but had no sense of how to embody that. Because that is the choice each moment - we can be in God and in Divine order and express that through the thoughts we accept and the actions we make, or we can do the same for evil. It's a bit of a stark choice.

The whole thing is a bit like learning to be a cabinet maker from a very thin book and no personal tuition. The furniture is inevitably rickety and as each year goes on everything becomes to look more and more like a few pieces of packing crate nailed together. And we think that is the definition of cabinet making because that's what we see and sit on.

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

My thinking has been influenced a lot by Greg Boyd and his work on natural evil (i.e. animal or human suffering not caused by human actions). Boyd builds a good biblical case that "fallenness" (i.e. the result of original sin) are not exclusive to humans, rather the Bible speaks of "all of creation groaning" in anticipation/yearning for the New Creation. And of course, the problem of evil (when understood to include natural evil) predates the existence of humanoids. Oversimplifying a rather complex and thoughtful argument, Boyd suggests that "the fall" occurred (thru Satanic intervention) in the 2nd moment (of 2nd nanosecond, or whatever the appropriately small measurement of time currently used to describe the Big Bang or whatever current theory of origin of universe) of the creation of the universe. iow, God's original intent not only for humans but for all of creation, was good and perfect, and had evolution proceeded along that divine plan, we would have that New Creation-- Eden. But the "corruption" of creation occurred at that 2nd moment, interrupting and subverting the entire process of evolution, so that corruption (or "fallenness") is built into the very process of evolution and of nature itself (e.g. "survival of the fittest", the food chain, nature as "red of tooth & claw"). Human fallenness is the ultimate expression of that corruption because of our freedom-- i.e. the degree of freedom we have determines both the amount of godliness we are capable of (the degree to which we reflect the imago Dei) but also the degree of evil to which we are capable. Humans are the most free creatures so are the most capable of evil (but also of godliness).

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

I admit to some sympathy with option 4 quoted in the OP

quote:
Yet another opinion says that the original justice must not be placed at the beginning but rather at the end of human history, that is, of creation understood as a continuous evolutionary progress. It is therefore a destination which man must reach at the end of his existence by his collaboration with divine help.

I think it works very well with the first creation myth in Genesis. God makes humanity in his own image, and it is very good. The Christian gospel includes that we are being made into the image of Christ. It doesn't seem too unreasonable to look around us and say that we're still in those first "6 days" of creation, that the culmination of creation with humanity made in the image of God and God taking his rest from his labours is in our future.

Of course, it's a view that doesn't work very well at all with the second creation myth, which places innocent humanity in a "historical" context with a fall from innocence in our past.

Posted by Anglican_Brat (# 12349) on :

Here is how I understand original sin and evolution:

The "Fall" occurred when human beings matured to a point where they could make a genuine free choice of whether to be self-centred or care for others. At that point, the law of love, the great commandment was imprinted upon the human heart. Humans thus "fell" when they refused to live up to their new maturity of being responsible stewards of creation and caretakers of each other, choosing instead to live out of concern only for themselves.

Understood this way, sin is interpreted as a refusal to mature, a refusal to grow up into the people God wants us to be. In short, sin is a refusal to evolve morally.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

This is an aspect of the Dead Horse of creation and evolution. So the thread belongs there, rather than Purgatory.

See you there, wearing my other Host Hat.

Barnabas62
Purgatory Host

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

Just a tad hasty there Barnabas - I think the power of being let loose on the blog macro settings last week has gone you you head slightly.

It might be a dead horse to you, but it's horse and salad sandwiches to us.

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

Looked a pianola ruling to me.

But feel free to query in the Styx, itsarumdo. That's how Host rulings can be reviewed. Just not on the thread itself.

Barnabas62
Dead Horse Host

(Hyde mode abandoned)

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

I love Boyd's open theism, and I've heard that before about Satan fouling the cosmos in the first Planck tick, and if Boyd said that with ANY hint of the literal, he's wrong. As a pure metaphor, OK. As with ALL of our narratives.

Evil is contingent. It goes with creation. There is no 'problem' of evil. If Satan didn't exist it wouldn't be necessary for Voltaire to invent him. ...

The trouble is, according to the incarnate Word, he does. Jesus not only interacted with him, which could have been intense, dissociated projection, but He remembered him from when He was God the Son. Which could also be totally genuine - true for Jesus - AND dissociation yet further I suppose.

So to the evolution of human consciousness, i.e. our sapience which is an order of magnitude and then a million, infinite above that of dogs, dolphins, cephalopods, ravens, other anthropoid apes ... which I've only JUST at 60 begun to seriously entertain, as my 'side bet' on Eden, on divine intervention, that degree of theistic evolution, has been far bigger than I realised, in fact until today, now, on this thread ... ... it means that if sapience evolved, if ontogeny does recapitulate phylogeny in child development (invalidated as it is in biology proper but not there) and one can therefore envisage the evolution of sapience, we are INNOCENT.

Sin is a metaphor.

But we cannot save ourselves.

We STILL need deliverance from evil, leading not in to temptation and forgiveness of sin and being washed whiter than snow and wool and shorn of all shame in The Blood of the The Lamb - well I do, to overcome my testeria - to find headspace above it all. We STILL need Jesus. Jesus IS the answer as without His transcendence in and of His humanity we'd have even less chance of seeing that.

Original sin, sin, the 'need' for Jesus to atone for our sins is ALL metaphor. All to be embraced and retained. As we move forward including the language of science, of psychology and beyond in to the postmodern. Poetry. BACK to the timeless and millennia of evolving poetry of the Bible and all the narratives that have spun off that and on again.

Jesus, Son of God, have mercy - pathos - on me a sinner. Including my sins of modernism, of analysis, of reason, of induction and deduction: all the logos enemies of ethos.

(and, itsarumdo, from BITTER experience, NEVER go there!)

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

not sure where the "there" is you mean, notPC, but I think the principle "whatever you put your attention on gets bigger" is a good rule of thumb for life.

as for Evolution, Genetics is a young science in the most complex thing there is - life - and I think it's got quite a few surprises up its sleeve. I don't think we were meant to be tweaking it. There's a very new and original sin for you.

[ 21. September 2014, 18:05: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

If not us then who?

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I've often seen the Adam and Eve story as about the dawning of consciousness and shame. So, animals are innocent, even though they kill and so on.

So presumably primitive hominids were innocent; but at some point, humans began to conceive of themselves, and then lost their innocence. Now they became morally conscious, and could experience shame and guilt.

However, I haven't the foggiest as to how God fits into that.

Well, there are different ways to think about innocence, as I learned from my late professor Alex García-Rivera. We tend to think of it as a virtue lost (like a pure white cloth that is ruined when stained) - or even as a childish ignorance that is lost (innocence v. knowledge/experience), but it can also be conceived of as a virtue to be gained.

It's one of my pet peeves when people romanticize nature (which you're not doing, I should add) - like a man in a class I took in seminary, who said, "All other creatures do God's will perfectly except humans." That can only be believed as a point of dogma, because any time spent with any non-human creatures will irrefutably demonstrate otherwise! Yet as you say, we don't consider them morally culpable, because, as you also say, they haven't attained to that point of self-awareness some ancestor of our species did at some point. And, just as we did as individuals, we as a species learned to sin (in the sense that we formed habits - many of which assured our survival and evolution - which we now see as morally problematic or evil) before we knew right from wrong.

Here's where I think God fits into it:

Like Martin PC not says,

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Evil is contingent. It goes with creation. There is no 'problem' of evil. If Satan didn't exist it wouldn't be necessary for Voltaire to invent him. ...

(Oh, I love that!)

Everything is contingent except God; everything is created except God; everything is mortal except God; only God is perfect. So in creation, God lovingly made room for that-which-is-not-God, and loved creation out into existence. That's "original blessing." But because creation is not God, it falls short of all God's perfections. It lacks love, it lacks goodness, it lacks unity, it lacks beauty, it lacks truth,* all to some degree - and that lack is what we know and experience as evil. When it is found in human (moral) behavior, we call it sin.

So our problem is not original sin - I don't really have much use for that particular dogma, and as an Episcopalian, I'm free to toss it out. [Razz]

Our problem is that, as creatures, we are bound, if you will, to imperfection and to corruptibility and mortality. We couldn't be otherwise. Even God could not have created us free from corruptibility and imperfection. They go with creatureliness.

Rather, God's problem - and ours, but really God's, more, since God chose to create - is that God's creation, left to its own devices, will end in decay and annihilation, while unleashing all kinds of evils along the way.

God "solves" that through the Incarnation. It's a mystery beyond our comprehension (as we're creatures, and have limitations like that), and the best I can state it is this: By joining the divine and human natures in the person of Christ, God has overcome the inherent alienation of creation from the creator. The Creator became creature, wedded creature and Creator together, and brought creation itself into the very life of the Holy Trinity (which is what the Ascension of Christ is really all about).

Now innocence is a virtue we can gain, and do gain, through Christ who possessed it (and all other virtues) all along.

*You'll note that most of these - beauty, goodness, unity, truth - are the "transcendentals" of philosophy; meaning they transcend all accidental categories, so that all things possess them to some degree. Transcendentals are also considered to be "convertible." IOW, all things have some degree of beauty, goodness, truth, and unity to the extend that they are real. That's one of the classical arguments against a dualistic system where good and evil (or God and Satan) are equals: I believe it was CS Lewis who pointed out that Satan possesses at least the (philosophical) good of existence, and therefore is not as "perfectly" evil as God is good. Lewis believed in a literal Satan; I take him to be metaphor, but that's beside the point.

[ 21. September 2014, 22:20: Message edited by: churchgeek ]

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:

(and, itsarumdo, from BITTER experience, NEVER go there!)

Back off, Martin. My rulings are testable publicly in the Styx by reference to the 10Cs and board guidelines. That's the right place.

And if you want to critique the effectiveness of the Styx for this purpose, you can do that in the Styx as well.

What you can't do is play Styx-critical games in the guise of "well-meaning" advice to another Shipmate in a discussion thread outside the Styx.

As you very well know.

Barnabas62
Dead Horses Host

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:

Everything is contingent except God; everything is created except God; everything is mortal except God; only God is perfect. So in creation, God lovingly made room for that-which-is-not-God, and loved creation out into existence. That's "original blessing." But because creation is not God, it falls short of all God's perfections. It lacks love, it lacks goodness, it lacks unity, it lacks beauty, it lacks truth,* all to some degree - and that lack is what we know and experience as evil. When it is found in human (moral) behavior, we call it sin.

So our problem is not original sin - I don't really have much use for that particular dogma, and as an Episcopalian, I'm free to toss it out. Our problem is that, as creatures, we are bound, if you will, to imperfection and to corruptibility and mortality. We couldn't be otherwise. Even God could not have created us free from corruptibility and imperfection. They go with creatureliness.

Rather, God's problem - and ours, but really God's, more, since God chose to create - is that God's creation, left to its own devices, will end in decay and annihilation, while unleashing all kinds of evils along the way.

God "solves" that through the Incarnation. It's a mystery beyond our comprehension (as we're creatures, and have limitations like that), and the best I can state it is this: By joining the divine and human natures in the person of Christ, God has overcome the inherent alienation of creation from the creator. The Creator became creature, wedded creature and Creator together, and brought creation itself into the very life of the Holy Trinity (which is what the Ascension of Christ is really all about).

Now innocence is a virtue we can gain, and do gain, through Christ who possessed it (and all other virtues) all along.

Isn't this a contradiction? First you say we are imperfect purely by being created and contingent creatures (unlike God). Our nature is contingent and by very virtue of definition corruptible.

Then the problem of our contingent nature is solved by fusing it or joining it to the uncontingent (God). That seems to me to be mixing the natures and our nature being subsumed somehow.

If God wanted us to be "taken up" within the Holy Trinity, why not do that from the start of creation?

It sounds like you're trying to jettison the idea of original innocence or Grace but you still end up with the same problem that Original Sin is trying to address: why are we imperfect now?

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

deosn't sin mean "to miss the point"? I think a mistake that's caused a lot of difficulty is the assumption of original sin = guilt = therefore we are BAD = therefore there's no hope through our own actions = therefore hat the heck, lets party. It also generates guilt, and spiritually, guilt is completely wasted effort - we do something or we don't do something - that's how it is. Then the next moment arises. If the next one arises with a feeling of guilt, the moment is wasted - we could have been doing something far more useful.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Barnabas 62, sorry and please see the Styx.

Posted by The Great Gumby (# 10989) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
* 've often seen the Adam and Eve story as about the dawning of consciousness and shame. So, animals are innocent, even though they kill and so on.

So presumably primitive hominids were innocent; but at some point, humans began to conceive of themselves, and then lost their innocence. Now they became morally conscious, and could experience shame and guilt.

However, * haven't the foggiest as to how God fits into that.

This, but with a few additions. The very nature of our existence means that we're consuming finite resources and killing other animals, plants, etc. Just to stay alive, we need to destroy - the Gospel According to Entropy, I suppose. With a dawning self-awareness, we suddenly have to reckon with that fact, and it makes us all guilty of putting our needs ahead of others' on some level.

With that self-awareness/consciousness comes a realisation that we will all die one day. And that's a game-changer. Death is just another natural process, to which we only attach significance when it has a terminal effect on the function of a particular bunch of cells we like to call a person, but the knowledge that it will happen to all of us in the end is both blessing and curse.

The story's a myth and a parable, but I don't think the involvement of a deity and a mischievous serpent adds anything to the basic message, which is that knowledge and awareness is good, but it's also sometimes scary, and because we know certain things, we've lost the simple innocence of just being able to do what we like without any consideration for the wider implications. I'm a firm believer that there's a very powerful secular angst in the Creation Myth, a feeling that things weren't always this way, but it's the price we pay for our knowledge.

(If you like, you can draw further speculative parallels based on the "pain of childbirth" being one of the consequences in the story, and the fact that what makes childbirth an especially painful and risky process in humans is that our heads/brains are now too big to comfortably fit through the pelvis. I like this idea, but I try not to get too fond of it.)

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

The Great Gumby

I like that. I have often pondered upon Adam and Eve in my work, as a therapist, as so much work with clients is taken up with guilt and shame, as paralyzing and indeed, self-destructive feelings.

In some ways, people who are full of shame and guilt, are excessively self-conscious; there really has been a fall into a kind of morbid self-preoccupation. However, that idea in itself has no effect, and in fact, is counter-productive.

But relief can be found from them; hence I suppose the (sort of) joke that therapy has replaced religion. We hear confessions and issue forgiveness, and charge moderate amounts of dosh.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

I believe in neither original sin nor the fall, so I guess that limits my ability to discuss on this thread a bit.

What I do believe is that evolution has an aspect of "looking out for number one" and part of God's wishes for us ('to be come sinless' if you want) is that we overcome these restraints evolution has brought us.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Anadromously

LeRoc - it qualifies you admirably. As I no longer do except as metaphor. And aye, we must transcend. Be transcended.
like a
q. - can I hire you?! Confession and forgiveness don't work of course. Not without the certainty that all will be made well. All the damage one has done to oneself and others.

TGG. - yep.

churchgeek. - YESSS! And not just because you like my sound bite.

Therefore:

Evensong. - No. I look forward to churchgeek answering for themselves, but there was never any original innocence, no paradise was lost apart from the bliss of non-sapient ignorance. It's evolutionarily meaningless. It's therefore meaningless in the Bronze Age onwards too. As it is in Papua-New Guinea and the Amazonian tribes that hide from man. We are perfectly imperfect. The best we can be. Always have been.

churchgeek is perfectly correct on the greatest mystery, the hypostatic union - Jesus - being the answer, the way, the only way for all humanity and more to be transcended. To be lifted up.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

The possibility of reconciling original sin and evolution, or finding parallels that actually mean something beyond feeling good about how it sounds, is remote.

One of these is a later-derived concept from an ancient mythology applied to a specific group of people several thousands of years ago. The other is a scientific theory that meets standards for data collection and interpretation consistent with the theory such that we accept it as fact (well, to fair, educated people accept evolution as fact).

This reminds of me of William Ewart Gladstone's attempts to take biblical creation and interpret it as parallel to evolution in the 19th century. It just doesn't go. Even if you can tell a "just so story" to persuade yourself and then get one of those warm glowing and elated feelings because you managed to convince yourself. Myself, I prefer wine, or better better yet, scotch for the creation of warm glowy feelings.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

This documentary maybe has something to say about your question, Evensong.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

I suspect that the Adam and Eve story, as a myth (in the sense of the literary genre of myth), is perhaps the best or only way we can grasp certain metaphysical truths, regardless of how it does or doesn't match up to evolution.

I also understand that the world is broken. Precisely how our actions and/or those of the fallen angels may have caused this, in a sense more specific than that of the myth of Creation and the Fall, I do not claim to know. It may even be that Time itself is one of the things which got broken, in a Time before Time. Certainly as a SF/fantasy/comics fan, the notion of reality being altered/broken (including backwards in time) and in need of repair is not foreign to me. So perhaps with this. Or something else beyond our comprehension.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Interesting that some Eastern religions see the brokenness as because of dualism - the dualism of self and other. In other words, the human can conceive of him/herself as an entity separate from life.

Once this is established, the gates of hell yaw open, as this 'self' is now subject to visceral anxiety, guilt, shame, and so on, because of its separation from life.

It also reminds me of Sartre, the idea that one is not a pure being, but a being as object for another. So I internalize an image of myself as an object.

The solution to this? Probably all religions provide some kind of solution, whereby the lonely self is reintegrated into life, via praxis not doxis.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

ChastMastr, you said the world is broken. Is it? or is it humanity that is broken? It seems to me that the natural world does it's thing in a non-broken way.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

Which suggests that human "sin" may be at least pstyly to do with a departure from the natural order.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

The Christian metanarrative suggests the whole of the created order ( humans, animals, the earth) is broken.

Broken in the sense that it is not running as God intended.

The theory of evolution bases itself on the idea of the survival of the fittest through natural selection.

This is contrary to Revelation in that God cares for the least of things and prefers self-giving love and sacrifice for others rather than self-serving interests.

So in that sense, nature and animals (thus evolution) are not a good guide to God's will.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Survival of the fittest is a dangerous phrase, as it can all too easily lead to the idea that the biggest and strongest are most likely to survive.

Well, look at the dinosaurs, who were pretty big.

It's getting close to 'red in tooth and claw' which again is incorrect. For example, cockroaches have lasted pretty well, not because they are strong and ferocious, but because they are adapted to their environment.

Or you can think of flightless birds and eyeless fish, and so on. Sometimes the weak and the slow survive pretty well.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I forgot to point out that cooperation is found widely in different animal groups, and without doubt helps them in their ability to reproduce. However, cooperation is not 'red in tooth and claw'!

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

"Survival of the fittest" in its competitive, tyranosaurus rex sense is certainly not the modern view of natural ecological systems, but is far more related to 19th century economics. I have the impression that even Darwin didn't believe in it. Nature is only as broken as man has interfered with it, and if you look at any abandoned building or canal, it is clear that Nature reclaims its own very quickly indeed. If something changes and the lion and the lamb lie down together, then I will not deny that, but at the moment I have the opinion that nature is not about twee furry animals having tea parties on an imaculately manicured lawn - but about each tiny piece of life living in harmony with each other. That harmony includes the fact that some bits of life eat other bits of life - but the whole system has an implicit order and an underlying energy, joy and exuberance of expression.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Well, Darwin did use the phrase, survival of the fittest, but 'fittest' then meant 'fitted'. Whereas it has been considerably vulgarized since then to mean biggest, fastest, bloodiest, and so on, which is off the mark.

So a delicate little moth or a humming bird may be a good fit in its ecological niche, and is able to transfer its genes to the next generation. Hurrah!

I don't really get what 'broken' means in relation to nature, unless people want vegetarian lions, I suppose.

Yes, there is a pleasing harmony sometimes in nature, although I suppose it's in the eye of the beholder. I remember that Darwin saw a huge flower, and predicted that a moth must exist with a huge proboscis, which fed from the the flower, and later, it was discovered. Neat fit. But maybe there is a bat or a bird which eats the moth - is this brokenness?

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Survival of the fittest is a dangerous phrase, as it can all too easily lead to the idea that the biggest and strongest are most likely to survive.

Only if one makes the mistake of equating "fittest" with "biggest and strongest."

quote:
Well, look at the dinosaurs, who were pretty big.
It's getting close to 'red in tooth and claw' which again is incorrect. For example, cockroaches have lasted pretty well, not because they are strong and ferocious, but because they are adapted to their environment.

Or you can think of flightless birds and eyeless fish, and so on. Sometimes the weak and the slow survive pretty well.

"Survival of the fittest" is actually a definition of "fittest" (or maybe even a tautology) because "fittest" = "adapted to their environment" = "survive pretty well."

"Red in tooth and claw" seems pretty accurate to me, in an abstract sense, since every living organism is food for some other organism, even if it's bacteria or scavengers feeding on a decomposing corpse. Only a very few species have no predators who hunt them.

Our usual idea of niceness does not fit well with the idea of nature being an expression of a Divine Design.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

I agree, that it's not nice. Maybe magnificent though. I've been watching hobbies catch dragonflies, a beautiful sight. Sometimes they also catch swallows and house-martins, the blackguards. Doubleplusnotnice.

A weird bit of publishing history - the Russian anarchist Kropotkin published a book, called, 'Mutual aid', which is about cooperation in animals, and he argues that this is important in evolution, and not just competition. It has been influential to an extent.

[ 24. September 2014, 19:31: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
I believe in neither original sin nor the fall, so I guess that limits my ability to discuss on this thread a bit.

What I do believe is that evolution has an aspect of "looking out for number one" and part of God's wishes for us ('to be come sinless' if you want) is that we overcome these restraints evolution has brought us.

I don't believe in original sin or the fall so I'll join you in not discussing it [Smile]

In defense of evolution, much of the "survival of the fittest" rhetoric ignores the way evolution occurs for social organisms. A mother defending her children or a man sacrificing his life to protect his brother both help the survival of the genes of the social group.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Creation is broken by definition. Which is good. As He said. God could not intend otherwise. What He intends is for it to transcend.

Posted by ChastMastr (# 716) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

I don't really get what 'broken' means in relation to nature, unless people want vegetarian lions, I suppose.

Evensong pretty much summed it up, but apparently vegetarian lions are what we're getting, yes, what with them lying down with lambs (and both of them getting up again, of course). The whole death/disease/predation thing is, as I understand it, part of the Fall and of the brokenness of this world, which waits in travail for the world to come. It doesn't mean lions (or we) are sinning by eating other animals, but it does not appear to be part of the original plan (even in Genesis the story talks about plants and the like being given to humans and animals for food).

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by W Hyatt:
"Survival of the fittest" is actually a definition of "fittest" (or maybe even a tautology) because "fittest" = "adapted to their environment" = "survive pretty well."

I have read that one of the philosophical quandaries of evolution is to define "fitness" in such a way that "survival of the fittest" isn't a tautology.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, Darwin did use the phrase, survival of the fittest, but 'fittest' then meant 'fitted'.

AIUI Darwin himself never used the phrase. It was coined by Thomas Huxley.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I have read that one of the philosophical quandaries of evolution is to define "fitness" in such a way that "survival of the fittest" isn't a tautology.

I think this is a pseudo-problem for Darwinism itself. Darwinism doesn't require there to be any single trait or set of traits that is universally the fittest. Thus, for finches, on some islands broad bills are fitter than narrower bills, and on others narrower bills are fitter than broad, depending on the vegetation.

On the other hand, if you start moralising Darwinism in a social Darwinist direction, so that you believe that the more deserving win out, then you do need to define more deserving independently of the fact that they win out.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, Darwin did use the phrase, survival of the fittest, but 'fittest' then meant 'fitted'.
AIUI Darwin himself never used the phrase. It was coined by Thomas Huxley.

I think it's in later editions of 'The Origin', well, the fifth edition. But modern biologists seem to hate the phrase, as it has been vulgarized, to refer to nature red in tooth and claw.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

I don't think "surveil of the fittest" is any different from "survival of the most adapted" in the context of the Christian metanarrative. The lion will lie down with the lamb etc as ChastMastr said.

Neither is part of the plan.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Survival of the fittest is a dangerous phrase, as it can all too easily lead to the idea that the biggest and strongest are most likely to survive.

Well, look at the dinosaurs, who were pretty big.

And probably the most successful group of animals ever to walk the planet. They were the dominant land animals for 150 million years or so. Of course, in the last 65 million it's been the smaller ones that have survived, as a rule. They are still the dominant flying animals. A tremendously important and successful group, as I said.

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: Creation is broken by definition. Which is good. As He said. God could not intend otherwise. What He intends is for it to transcend.

I find myself gloriously agreeing with you. Which is a rather nice thing.

I'm still trying to fit my own thoughts on the subject into a somewhat coherent narrative. Not sure if I'm succeeding (or indeed whether I should). But this is what I've got so far.

There is a nasty streak about evolution. It involves death, competition for limited resources, looking out for yourself in the first place ...
I don't believe that this is the result of the fall, sin, the devil, a demiurg ... God created the world in this way.
The question "Why would a good God create such a world?" is related to the Problem of Evil of course. My own partial take on it is that living in a limited world is necessary for us to have free will.
Evolution doesn't have a moral dimension in itself. These things started to be seen as 'bad' when conscient humans arrived on the scene.
Evolution isn't all bad. There are many examples of animals who collaborate with eachother.
I still believe there is a selfish element to most of these forms of collaboration though. Helping the group can improve your own chances of survival. Helping your children allows your genes to live on. Therefore, I still hesitate to classify this collaboration as altruism or self-sacrifice.
There are some reported cases of altruism in animals. Dolphins rescuing drowned people for example. I do think that the frequency of these cases is exaggerated in some discussions. But I'm willing to concede that 'higher' animals have some form of proto-morality.
At least in part, the task God has given us is to transcend some of the limitations put upon us by evolution. To become altruist or self-sacrificial, even when evolution says we shouldn't. This is in large part how I interpret the references to the Kingdom of God in the Gospels.

Not sure if this is completely coherent yet. Maybe if I let it simmer for a while it will be.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Survival of the fittest is a dangerous phrase, as it can all too easily lead to the idea that the biggest and strongest are most likely to survive.

Well, look at the dinosaurs, who were pretty big.

And probably the most successful group of animals ever to walk the planet. They were the dominant land animals for 150 million years or so. Of course, in the last 65 million it's been the smaller ones that have survived, as a rule. They are still the dominant flying animals. A tremendously important and successful group, as I said.

It puts an entirely new slant on dinosaur shaped turkey bits. [Smile]

[ 25. September 2014, 11:47: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:

quote:
Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard: Creation is broken by definition. Which is good. As He said. God could not intend otherwise. What He intends is for it to transcend.
I find myself gloriously agreeing with you. Which is a rather nice thing.

I'm still trying to fit my own thoughts on the subject into a somewhat coherent narrative. Not sure if I'm succeeding (or indeed whether I should). But this is what I've got so far.
There is a nasty streak about evolution. It involves death, competition for limited resources, looking out for yourself in the first place ...
I don't believe that this is the result of the fall, sin, the devil, a demiurg ... God created the world in this way.
The question "Why would a good God create such a world?" is related to the Problem of Evil of course. My own partial take on it is that living in a limited world is necessary for us to have free will.
Evolution doesn't have a moral dimension in itself. These things started to be seen as 'bad' when conscient humans arrived on the scene.
Evolution isn't all bad. There are many examples of animals who collaborate with eachother.
I still believe there is a selfish element to most of these forms of collaboration though. Helping the group can improve your own chances of survival. Helping your children allows your genes to live on. Therefore, I still hesitate to classify this collaboration as altruism or self-sacrifice.
There are some reported cases of altruism in animals. Dolphins rescuing drowned people for example. I do think that the frequency of these cases is exaggerated in some discussions. But I'm willing to concede that 'higher' animals have some form of proto-morality.
At least in part, the task God has given us is to transcend some of the limitations put upon us by evolution. To become altruist or self-sacrificial, even when evolution says we shouldn't. This is in large part how I interpret the references to the Kingdom of God in the Gospels.
Not sure if this is completely coherent yet. Maybe if I let it simmer for a while it will be.

Sorry, I just can't agree for several reasons - the principle that something is deliberately made broken I can't go with.

Free will creates huge possibilities, but also the possibility to self-break. Or in this case, to separate, to name things as if they were separate. Every time we use a noun without also being aware of the relationships that "object" exists in, we perpetuate the fall. Particularly when we objectify evil, as if it is something we own or are ("I am ill", "I have a cold"), or we believe that it exists. This solidifies it and manifests it rather than it remaing a spiritual "idea".

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

sorry - that was a duplicate

[ 25. September 2014, 11:57: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]

Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on :

quote:
itsarumdo: Sorry, I just can't agree for several reasons - the principle that something is deliberately made broken I can't go with.

No problem if you don't agree with me. It's interesting to read your take on it.

quote:
itsarumdo: Free will creates huge possibilities, but also the possibility to self-break.

It's funny. You seem to be using a similar argument to mine here, but turned around. To me, the possibility to (self-)break creates (gives room to) free will. We can only have free will if there is something to choose.

quote:
itsarumdo: Or in this case, to separate, to name things as if they were separate. Every time we use a noun without also being aware of the relationships that "object" exists in, we perpetuate the fall.

Now you've moved into an interesting and to me somewhat surprising realm. Are you saying that we should look at things wholistically, and naming them individually is the cause of bad things? Or am I interpreting you wrong here? I'm not sure if we can really avoid naming things.

(I am aware that naming things is an important theme in the Genesis creation story. Is this what you're referring to?)

quote:
itsarumdo: Particularly when we objectify evil, as if it is something we own or are ("I am ill", "I have a cold"), or we believe that it exists. This solidifies it and manifests it rather than it remaing a spiritual "idea".

I agree with you that it's probably not a good idea to objectify evil, but for different reasons. I don't share your belief that naming things in this way gives them more power.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Survival of the fittest is a dangerous phrase, as it can all too easily lead to the idea that the biggest and strongest are most likely to survive.

Well, look at the dinosaurs, who were pretty big.

And probably the most successful group of animals ever to walk the planet. They were the dominant land animals for 150 million years or so. Of course, in the last 65 million it's been the smaller ones that have survived, as a rule. They are still the dominant flying animals. A tremendously important and successful group, as I said.
It puts an entirely new slant on dinosaur shaped turkey bits.

Aye. It's worth remembering, as you dive into your Christmas dinner, that 100 million years ago its ancestors were eating yours.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
It's worth remembering, as you dive into your Christmas dinner, that 100 million years ago its ancestors were eating yours.

Turnabout is fair play.

Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :

Very satisfying! [Big Grin]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Nothing is deliberately made broken apart from being made: if it's made, it's broken by definition. If you don't want anything, everything broken, don't make anything.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Nothing is deliberately made broken apart from being made: if it's made, it's broken by definition. If you don't want anything, everything broken, don't make anything.

Martin - Sometimes I think you make a lot of sense, sometimes I have a sense there is some sense in there, even if I'm struggling to re-order the words, and sometimes, like now, I think you are generating random sentences, and might actually be an anonymous attempt to pass the Turing test.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Got me! I'm a Dell PowerEdge ZX81. No creation: no cry.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Nothing is deliberately made broken apart from being made: if it's made, it's broken by definition. If you don't want anything, everything broken, don't make anything.

That was actually a post I understand pretty well, probably because I think there is truth in it.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

....only if you ignore the promise of the new heaven and the new earth and disregard the Garden of Eden narrative.

Posted by W Hyatt (# 14250) on :

quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
3. The question "Why would a good God create such a world?" is related to the Problem of Evil of course. My own partial take on it is that living in a limited world is necessary for us to have free will.

I would agree. Perfection in creation is not a quality that stands alone because perfection can only be defined with regard to some purpose. My guess is that these discussions normally assume that the purpose is to provide us with the maximum happiness.

However, I believe that God creates us to live in physical creation so that we can (and indeed must) make a choice. We are born with tendencies to embrace only the purely natural aspects of life and pursue what feels to us to be good (or "natural"), which can lead us to become selfish and lazy. We also have tendencies to rise above that and embrace spiritual aspects of life (by which I mean things like genuine compassion and a desire to help others) in addition to the natural aspects. And I believe that the physical world around is perfectly designed to provide us the freedom to make this choice, but also to encourage us to choose the latter approach. If everything was "perfect" in the way that we would design it ourselves, there would be no such choice to be made because there would be no mutually exclusive alternatives.

This doesn't require disregarding the Garden of Eve narrative, only seeing it as symbolic of our spiritual choices and development (as opposed to being a description of the world we see around us).

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Got me! I'm a Dell PowerEdge ZX81. No creation: no cry.

"your last discarded Windows 95 machine, which has been developing a conscious mind since you last paid attention to it. Windows 95 now has the approximate personality of an obsessive stalker/serial killer, and its only quarry is you. Not to worry, I’m sure it’s harmless. "

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Only if you are a literalist Evensong. How can one disregard myth?

God CANNOT make sapience ethically perfect by fiat. But by suffering, transitively and intransitively only.

At every stage that is the best of all possible worlds. Perfect. Until absolute perfection comes. Which will NEVER happen. As He says.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Only if you are a literalist Evensong. How can one disregard myth?

God CANNOT make sapience ethically perfect by fiat. But by suffering, transitively and intransitively only.

Or by letting us know that we have choice in the matter. He works hard and not a lot of people seem to listen.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Only if you are a literalist Evensong. How can one disregard myth?

I'm not a literalist Martin. I'm listening to the myth because myth's contain truth. You seem to be disregarding it completely.

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:

God CANNOT make sapience ethically perfect by fiat. But by suffering, transitively and intransitively only.

Suffering expands compassion. That's the only thing it's good for. It was not God's intent to create us so that we would suffer. The myth implies we were in communion with God initially and there was no suffering.

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:

At every stage that is the best of all possible worlds. Perfect. Until absolute perfection comes. Which will NEVER happen. As He says.

No that's not what he says. The new heaven and the new earth will be perfect when Christ comes again.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Evensong,
Surely the "truth" behind the myth is we are responsible for our own faults. Gathering anything else out of that narrative seems a bit much.

quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
[QB He works hard and not a lot of people seem to listen. [/QB]

I think the best you can get is that He worked hard. Appears to have scaled back in the last couple of millennia.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:
No that's not what he says. The new heaven and the new earth will be perfect when Christ comes again

You know, the Mormans are not so far off main stream Christianity it would seem.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

He's having an awayday. Apparently, the aliens in Alpha Centauri are running riot.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Evensong - we must put away childish things.

[Re-]Creation myths.

Humanity will be a lot better off transcendent for sure. But how will His government increase without end?

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Evensong,
Surely the "truth" behind the myth is we are responsible for our own faults. Gathering anything else out of that narrative seems a bit much.

quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
[QB He works hard and not a lot of people seem to listen.
I think the best you can get is that He worked hard. Appears to have scaled back in the last couple of millennia. [/QB]

No - it's just that the Christian church has refused to recognise all the help that was sent after Christ, unless they happened to be also part of the institution.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I don't think "surveil of the fittest" is any different from "survival of the most adapted" in the context of the Christian metanarrative. The lion will lie down with the lamb etc as ChastMastr said.

Neither is part of the plan.

Why does there have to be 'a plan'?

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Evensong - we must put away childish things.

Well in my tradition, the scriptures are not childish and cannot be dismissed.

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
I don't think "surveil of the fittest" is any different from "survival of the most adapted" in the context of the Christian metanarrative. The lion will lie down with the lamb etc as ChastMastr said.

Neither is part of the plan.
Why does there have to be 'a plan'?

There doesn't have to be a plan. You can be an atheist. Fact is, there is one in the Christian tradition.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Neither is part of the plan.

Why does there have to be 'a plan'?

quote:
There doesn't have to be a plan. You can be an atheist. Fact is, there is one in the Christian tradition.

I was suggesting that God may not have a plan. That he plays.

So I'm not sure what you are hinting at by referring to an atheist and who you mean by there being one in the Xian trad.

[ 28. September 2014, 17:42: Message edited by: Louise ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

In mine too Evensong. Until recently. And even then the transcendence shines through. But we are. Childish. Furthermore the scriptures come from an even more childish age. For literally 98% of our sapience we were up to two years old. The age at which a human is at their most violent. We have virtually no narrative, no memories of being 2 (I have a couple of acute ones). We got to be mainly 4 about 4000 years ago. We learned to write. Our myths come from then.

Jesus came to, what, a 13 year old world? And we are now about 18.

What ISN'T there childish about us that doesn't come from Him and His Spirit globally?

Oh and only a fool would dismiss our childhood and its creative writing.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Neither is part of the plan.
Why does there have to be 'a plan'?
quote:
There doesn't have to be a plan. You can be an atheist. Fact is, there is one in the Christian tradition.
I was suggesting that God may not have a plan. That he plays.

Yes. I gathered. But I don't think God plays dice.

The issue of suffering and evil would be doubly monstrous if she did.

quote:
Originally posted by leo:

So I'm not sure what you are hinting at by referring to an atheist and who you mean by there being one in the Xian trad.

An atheist rejects God and therefore rejects salvation history.

The plan in Xtian trad is embedded in salvation history. Salvation history is revealed through the scriptures.

[ 28. September 2014, 17:43: Message edited by: Louise ]

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
In mine too Evensong. Until recently. And even then the transcendence shines through. But we are. Childish. Furthermore the scriptures come from an even more childish age. For literally 98% of our sapience we were up to two years old. The age at which a human is at their most violent. We have virtually no narrative, no memories of being 2 (I have a couple of acute ones). We got to be mainly 4 about 4000 years ago. We learned to write. Our myths come from then.

Jesus came to, what, a 13 year old world? And we are now about 18.

What ISN'T there childish about us that doesn't come from Him and His Spirit globally?

Oh and only a fool would dismiss our childhood and its creative writing.

You seem to be taking a very low view of the scriptures here Martin. You have also succumbed to the secular myth of progress (that we are ever getting better as humanity).

I'm afraid I don't share either of those views.

I'm interested in hearing from those that do take the scriptures seriously and are curious about their confluence with the current theory of evolution.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

On the contrary I take the highest possible view of scripture and attribute the human progress revealed in it and beyond on the arc to now to God's providence.

There is no confluence possible with scripture and the facts of evolution without a full, postmodern deconstruction.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Evensong - we must put away childish things.
Well in my tradition, the scriptures are not childish and cannot be dismissed.

But the scriptures are not a biology or genetics text are they? Don't dismiss them, but don't misuse them. The attempted consilience of evolution and original sin is a misuse, and a most grievous intellectual sin.

The scriptures don't instruct us about science. At all. The can't. When you try to apply scripture to evolution you are treating the scriptures in a childish manner, and this must be put away, unless you wish to experience general rejection of your views and laughter of the various scientists who enjoy mocking kindergarten-ish views of religion. The bible doesn't instruct us on climate change either, does it?

To try to make scripture apply to evolution is about as sensible as trying to apply music to evolution, say Beethoven's 5th symphony, or perhaps art to evolution. I suggest you'll have far more luck with the art.

Though no one bothers with art history any more and listening to too much Beethoven will more likely cause you to invade the neighbouring country before it informs anyone's view of biology.

[ 28. September 2014, 15:54: Message edited by: no prophet ]

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Some scripture assumes a 3-tiered universe, doesn't it? I know that you can take a Hawking-type attitude to this, and say that it's a model, and therefore not real, but presumably, people who do see the Bible as scientifically accurate, do take it as real?

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
In mine too Evensong. Until recently. And even then the transcendence shines through. But we are. Childish. Furthermore the scriptures come from an even more childish age. For literally 98% of our sapience we were up to two years old. The age at which a human is at their most violent. We have virtually no narrative, no memories of being 2 (I have a couple of acute ones). We got to be mainly 4 about 4000 years ago. We learned to write. Our myths come from then.

Jesus came to, what, a 13 year old world? And we are now about 18.

What ISN'T there childish about us that doesn't come from Him and His Spirit globally?

Oh and only a fool would dismiss our childhood and its creative writing.
You seem to be taking a very low view of the scriptures here Martin. You have also succumbed to the secular myth of progress (that we are ever getting better as humanity).

I'm afraid I don't share either of those views.

I'm interested in hearing from those that do take the scriptures seriously and are curious about their confluence with the current theory of evolution.

The current theory of evolution is evolving itself. There is still a "God of the Gaps" in the step between non-life and life. take a look at XVIVO Inner life of the Cell and consider that most cells are so densely packed that they only have about 30% free space. also see the XVIVO mitochondria animation and consider how the rotating engine of the mitochondria might have evolved. There are lots of other "Gods of the Gaps" - like compare DNA copying and consider how this gets to and from DNA packaging , and how individual short lengths of DNA are repeatedly accessed accurately to make specific proteins (Transcription) or to control specific switches during embryological growth...

The EvoDevo approach (e.g. see Sean Carroll) shows that there is information movement ion both directions - it's not just DNA controlling everything but also environmental factors controlling DNA expression, or even causing alteration of DNA. Furthermore, 90% of the DNA in a human body is bacterial rather than human/mitochondria, and our evolution symbiotically with these bacteria over hundreds of millions of years means that we are walking ecosystems. If you want a simple description of the Fall, it would at least in part be the idea that as humans we could be somehow separate form and better than the ecosystem that we evolved in. We are graced with consciousness so that we can perceive beauty, but somehow we have allowed that to degenerate into a belief of I-and-Other.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Some scripture assumes a 3-tiered universe, doesn't it? I know that you can take a Hawking-type attitude to this, and say that it's a model, and therefore not real, but presumably, people who do see the Bible as scientifically accurate, do take it as real?

Yes, but what about them? Why do they matter?

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

As ever mousethief, apart from over some odd dispositional and cultural gulfs, absolutely.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Evensong - we must put away childish things.
Well in my tradition, the scriptures are not childish and cannot be dismissed.
But the scriptures are not a biology or genetics text are they? Don't dismiss them, but don't misuse them. The attempted consilience of evolution and original sin is a misuse, and a most grievous intellectual sin.

The scriptures don't instruct us about science. At all. The can't. When you try to apply scripture to evolution you are treating the scriptures in a childish manner, and this must be put away, unless you wish to experience general rejection of your views and laughter of the various scientists who enjoy mocking kindergarten-ish views of religion. The bible doesn't instruct us on climate change either, does it?

Of course the bible is not a scientific text so we can't force a merging or a one on one alignment. But I still think the broad categories of revelation must have some bearing on the world around us. Separating them out entirely and treating them completely separately is akin to denying the incarnation or proposing that we are pure spirit and that the world matters not at all. Too gnostic.

quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
If you want a simple description of the Fall, it would at least in part be the idea that as humans we could be somehow separate form and better than the ecosystem that we evolved in. We are graced with consciousness so that we can perceive beauty, but somehow we have allowed that to degenerate into a belief of I-and-Other.

That works. Bit like St Paul's idea of being controlled solely by "the flesh" and the "powers and principalities" of this world.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

I presume powers and principalities are angels ... ? Or does he mean the Roman Empire?

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

There's an entire, extended Bible study in that question ... but, my short answer is "both".

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

That is the same argument used by YECists: if one doesn't accept a woodenly literal translation then one is denying Christ. My personal need for Him has never been greater whether the Fall of Satan and Adam and Eve are entirely metaphoric or not.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Of course the bible is not a scientific text so we can't force a merging or a one on one alignment. But I still think the broad categories of revelation must have some bearing on the world around us. Separating them out entirely and treating them completely separately is akin to denying the incarnation or proposing that we are pure spirit and that the world matters not at all. Too gnostic.

No, that's not the point. If one insists that Genesis must have some correspondence to scientific/historical factuality, then the either/or decision has only one possible outcome: Genesis is false.

However, if you view Genesis as myth in the highest sense ("what always happens"--does anybody know the source of that quote?), it's very different. Adam and Eve are just Man and Woman. I'm Adam, you're Eve. The Fall happens every time we turn away from God to rely on our own resources, and Redemption happens whenever we repent and turn back. In other words, both are happening all the time. Then there's no conflict between science and revelation.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Nice one Tim. But how did we turn toward God in the first place in our emergent sapience four (not to five, neither to three ...) hundred thousand years ago?

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
how did we turn toward God in the first place

How? Imperfectly. But, God, in His perfection turned towards us. Thus, we will in due time be made in His image.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Of course the bible is not a scientific text so we can't force a merging or a one on one alignment. But I still think the broad categories of revelation must have some bearing on the world around us. Separating them out entirely and treating them completely separately is akin to denying the incarnation or proposing that we are pure spirit and that the world matters not at all. Too gnostic.
No, that's not the point. If one insists that Genesis must have some correspondence to scientific/historical factuality, then the either/or decision has only one possible outcome: Genesis is false.

However, if you view Genesis as myth in the highest sense ("what always happens"--does anybody know the source of that quote?), it's very different. Adam and Eve are just Man and Woman. I'm Adam, you're Eve. The Fall happens every time we turn away from God to rely on our own resources, and Redemption happens whenever we repent and turn back. In other words, both are happening all the time. Then there's no conflict between science and revelation.

A very fine post, which as you say, solves many problems to do with the apparent disjunction between factual history and spiritual experience. It reminds me a lot of Jung, who said something rather similar, except that he said it about non-Christian myths as well. See for example, his writings on alchemy. Congratulations.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

Oh by the way, 'myths are the things that never happened, but always are'. Salutius? Sometimes spelled Salustis.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

I need to hear more Alan, MUCH more. You've been thinking on these things with your first class mind for decades, seen me here for well over one of them, clinging on to my side bet of creationism, A&E, even The Flood. You NEVER used your firepower on me. I remember you openly questioning me on my attempts to reconcile The Flood and the genealogies, to justify them in the face of the scientific narrative that I fully acknowledged ALONG with fundamentalist claims. No mere YECist me! Worse. It's taken 10 years and more for the postmodern to work its magic and now I deconstruct EVERYTHING. And paradoxically my faith is not just undiminished. Stronger. Lonelier.

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Creation is broken by definition. Which is good. As He said. God could not intend otherwise. What He intends is for it to transcend.

Well it certainly is,as the Eden story tells us. As for the comment that that is good, you have chapter and verse for that? And just how in history has anything been transcended! Like me you are almost old enough to remember WW2. You probably like me, lost family members in it. Some
transcension that wasn't it? A total stuff up the likes of which has continued ever since. Anyway, it Sounds like a religion of works..very tiring!

And as regards everything is metaphor..an easy out!

Face it you old sinner!

Evensong, I don't post here much now but I do read and I like you. You are one of the few posters here that seems resilient and relatively humble.

Have you considered that maybe evolution is a crock? It is unbelievably woven into pretty well every world view and to question it is really to either embarrassingly see the elephant in the room or to touch the 'sacred' thing because to the secular thinker the alternative is simply unthinkable, ie.Goddidit. He did it all and he will one day require an account of how we lived the lives he gave us.

Regarding the Eden story, it's explanatory power is extraordinary, much better than seeing creation as the elephant on the back of a tortoise or Atlas holding up the Earth, and it tells me my basic problem ..I'm selfish...and it tells me why that is, I have been contaminated with the fallout of my forbears' basic fault for which there is one solution and one only, the blood of the other forbear, the last Adam who did not fall. 1Cor 15:45 and Romans 5:15

Divest our faith of this and it ceases to exist becoming mere humanism in disguise.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

Have you considered that maybe evolution is a crock?

There are loads of problems with this assertion, the most important being it is not even the fucking point!

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

Have you considered that maybe evolution is a crock?
There are loads of problems with this assertion, the most important being it is not even the fucking point!

Indeed there are. The standard way to tell whether a scientific model is a crock is to compare its predictions with the real world. When you do that with evolution, it comes through really, really well.

Do you know what Tiktaalik is Jamat? Do you know where it was found? Do you know why people were looking for it in that particular place?

And evolution is not a world-view, FFS. It's a scientific model. Is the germ theory of disease a "world-view"? Is heliocentricity a "world-view"? Why single out evolution, except that you don't like it?

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
You have also succumbed to the secular myth of progress (that we are ever getting better as humanity).

Is it a myth? A thousand years ago we thought nothing of putting an entire city to the sword if we conquered it (Crusades); two hundred years ago a public hanging (which may have been of criminals as young as seven years old) was considered a fun morning out for the family. We used to flog people almost to death. We used to hang them until nearly dead and then pull out their entrails in front of their still living eyes. We used to extract confessions through torture and then torture the confessor to death for what he'd confessed. No doubt things like this still go on in parts of the world, but at least most humans at least claim not to approve of them. We most certainly have progressed in many ways.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

It depends on what you mean by progress. My grandparents worked in cotton mills, in terrible conditions, from which they contracted lung diseases. They lived in slums with no bathrooms, and were usually very poor.

My parents bought their own house, with a bathroom and central heating; they went on foreign holidays, had a car, and so on.

They would have laughed themselves hoarse if you'd said that this improvement was mythical.

Posted by Wood (# 7) on :

quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It depends on what you mean by progress. My grandparents worked in cotton mills, in terrible conditions, from which they contracted lung diseases. They lived in slums with no bathrooms, and were usually very poor.

My parents bought their own house, with a bathroom and central heating; they went on foreign holidays, had a car, and so on.

They would have laughed themselves hoarse if you'd said that this improvement was mythical.

This is sort of true but it's not linear.

Like the Romans had good personal hygiene, decent teeth, central heating, roads, concrete, irrigation technologies and a working sewer system, and then between the second and third centuries a bunch of massive plagues wiped out most of the population of Europe, creating what amounted to a zombie apocalypse without actual zombies, most of these advances were lost, and the Middle Ages happened, which were a backward step. Progress happens, but sometimes ground is lost.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

You could read THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE, by Stephen Pinker, in which he does prove (with charts and graphs!) that things are indeed getting better.

Is there a person on this board who is not reading these words with vision enhanced by modern technology? Probably there are one or two persons with natural 20-20 vision here, but not more. My retinologist saved the sight of my left eye with intraocular injections (what you are imagining? Yes, that. It was horrid.) that were invented within this decade. Fifteen years ago I would be blind in one eye.

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
...

And evolution is not a world-view, FFS. It's a scientific model. Is the germ theory of disease a "world-view"? Is heliocentricity a "world-view"? Why single out evolution, except that you don't like it?

I agree with most of that, but Germ theory is definitely a world view. Cellular theory was never disproven and in fact, Germ theory is a small extreme end of cellular theory, that applies when everything else has gone to pot. The fact that our western medical culture has followed germ theory for 100 years or so doesn't prove it is correct - just that scientific paradigms are often written in tablets of stone. Both Pasteur and Jenner in the end were worried that they had got it wrong.

Ditto evolution based purely on Mendelian genetics is something of a late 20th century fashion that will probably be discarded in another 10 or 20 years time.

Heliocentricity is also up for grabs - I think that the latest views on cosmology say that every point in the universe is the centre of the universe. So if you are an observer on Earthm, you are in effect at the centre of the universe. Ok - big objects tend to have smaller ones revolving round them in a relative manner, but even the tiny earth creates a rotational wobble in the sun.

Unfortunately for anyone who wishes to defend it based on specific cases, science is a work of approximations in progress - not a set of reliable truths. I don't believe the creationists view of a trickster God and a biblical timeframe, and I think that evolution and the geological succession are probably correct in most detail. But quite honestly, the defence against creationism is in grave danger of turning science into "undeniable fact" and therefore creating yet another extreme and prejudiced world view.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:
The fact that our western medical culture has followed germ theory for 100 years or so doesn't prove it is correct - just that scientific paradigms are often written in tablets of stone. Both Pasteur and Jenner in the end were worried that they had got it wrong.

So you go ahead and reconnect your toilet to your water supply.

quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:

Ditto evolution based purely on Mendelian genetics is something of a late 20th century fashion that will probably be discarded in another 10 or 20 years time.

Who does this? Mendelian genetics is consistent with natural selection and gradual evolution, who considers it the sum total?

quote:
Originally posted by itsarumdo:

Heliocentricity is also up for grabs - I think that the latest views on cosmology say that every point in the universe is the centre of the universe. So if you are an observer on Earthm, you are in effect at the centre of the universe. Ok - big objects tend to have smaller ones revolving round them in a relative manner, but even the tiny earth creates a rotational wobble in the sun.

How does this even make sense?

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

Heliocentricity is nothing to do with locating the centre of the universe. Just the centre of the earth-sun system.

If we're going to start knocking germ theory of disease we might as well go the whole hog to Crankville and throw our lot in with the homeopaths, anti-vaccers and other assorted swivel-eyed loons. They'd have a perpetual motion machine for us, but were too busy avoiding the effects of the chemtrails...

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Have you considered that maybe evolution is a crock? It is unbelievably woven into pretty well every world view and to question it is really to either embarrassingly see the elephant in the room or to touch the 'sacred' thing because to the secular thinker the alternative is simply unthinkable, ie.Goddidit. He did it all and he will one day require an account of how we lived the lives he gave us.

Regarding the Eden story, it's explanatory power is extraordinary, much better than seeing creation as the elephant on the back of a tortoise or Atlas holding up the Earth, and it tells me my basic problem ..I'm selfish...and it tells me why that is, I have been contaminated with the fallout of my forbears' basic fault for which there is one solution and one only, the blood of the other forbear, the last Adam who did not fall. 1Cor 15:45 and Romans 5:15

Divest our faith of this and it ceases to exist becoming mere humanism in disguise.

Really? If one looks at evolution, the mass of evidence makes it unlikely to be a crock. Woven into all the world views, means evidence everywhere. It's been refined as the DNA mechanism is better understood but it keeps showing up as correct.

As far as your theory that most people accept the preponderance of evidence for evolution because they're afraid that it was God what done it is incorrect. If you showed me incontrovertible evidence ( and corrupted documents handed down from Very Important People who said it was so don't count as evidence) you'd have to show the creator was your almighty deity and not some alien who evolved elsewhere and stopped on earth for a one week art project.

As for Eden being better than tortoises, that's a low bar for a world view. Isn't evolution better than the tortoise model? Yet that's not sufficient for you to not dismiss it. The evidence keeps piling up. Look at the National Geographic Genome Project to see the incredible detail about the origins of man.

You keep trotting in here with some piece of long debunked creationist propaganda and are surprised that it is refuted as nonsense and then scurry away saying that you're not a scientist. Now you return to malign those who look at the mountains of evidence and claim they're scared of the consequences.

Have you considered that Genesis is a crock? Just because you would find it handy for it to be true doesn't make it so.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Nice one Tim. But how did we turn toward God in the first place in our emergent sapience four (not to five, neither to three ...) hundred thousand years ago?

If you must link it to the evolution of humans, it would probably be at the point where we evolved the cognitive complexity for hypothetical thinking: imagination and anticipation (i.e., if I do a, I expect b will follow, but if I do x, the outcome will probably be y...) I don't see how you can have moral responsibility without that. But reducing the myth to a parable about thinking seems to trivialize it. Its power is greatest when it's not a story about what some remote ancestor did, but a story about what I do every day. That's a really yummy looking apple...

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Nice one again.

Posted by pimple (# 10635) on :

Tried the link in the OP and was told it was none of my business. Is tis a redundant H&A Day prank or what?

Posted by itsarumdo (# 18174) on :

This tread was migrated across here just as it got going and then two other threads started up in Purg to replace it - so we ended up in a parallel universe... maybe that's appropriate. But a tad annoying. I get the impression that the Mods here are a law unto themselves.

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

hosting

Itsarumdo, any complaints or comments on hosting decisions go in the Styx and not on any other board. If you think Purgatory hosts have missed a thread which is actually a Dead Horse then you can PM them and ask about it. Please take any further comments on this to the Styx.

thanks,
Louise
Dead Horses Host
hosting off

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

quote:
Originally posted by pimple:
Tried the link in the OP and was told it was none of my business. Is tis a redundant H&A Day prank or what?

hosting There's been a recent board tidy up where older threads have been sent to Oblivion. Unfortunately I was away when this thread started and so don't know what the original thread was to re-find it. If someone PMs me the old thread title of the thread this spun off from I'll look for it to relink it.

[edited to add - in fact the thread isn't oblivionated, there seems to have been some kind of problem with the link - I've found it and I hope fixed it]

thanks,
L

Dead Horses Host

hosting off

[ 07. October 2014, 21:21: Message edited by: Louise ]

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Palimpsest:

You keep trotting in here with some piece of long debunked creationist propaganda and are surprised that it is refuted as nonsense and then scurry away saying that you're not a scientist. Now you return to malign those who look at the mountains of evidence and claim they're scared of the consequences.

Have you considered that Genesis is a crock? Just because you would find it handy for it to be true doesn't make it so. [/QB]

You are a sinner so am I. Sin is our daily reality. So,no fall,no sin,no gospel. The gospel is in essence that Christ came,died a death that atoned for sin, rose as proof of the Father's approval of his sinless life and cosmic mission. None of it makes any sense at all without Genesis. Talk as many will of senselessly wooden interpretation, the alternative is a rationalising away of sin and the denial of the need for Christ.

With Genesis and only with its truth is there a way to make sense of why we are like we are and why the advent and intervention of God in sending Christ,can give us hope.

One of my greatest battles when I first came to faith was to recognise how utterly programmed I had been into naturalism and now faced with an epiphany that Christ was in fact a living reality I realised one thing needed to give way. Believe me I did not accept Genesis easily but the lie of evolution did fall away in the end. If it is true then,quite simply,God is not. We all need to make our own peace with that.

I have made mine and because I do not know your journey I cannot judge yours other than what you posted here. The only thing I would say to you is that the promise that if one loves truth then one will know it has been a saying of The Lord Jesus that has never let me down. And a correlative openness to correction is a necessary complement to that.

I am not a creationist in the sense of preoccupation with their concerns or an apologist or any kind of expert. I am simply someone who over 40 years of a belief in Christ has experienced many personal affirmations of his reality. I am committed absolutely to what he has shown me and one of those non negotiables is the Bible in its entirety.

So, Palimpsest,I wish you well.

Posted by Doublethink. (# 1984) on :

Why can't Genesis just be an extended parable to explain the existence of sin - I don't see why it needs to be literally true to explain sin.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

That we are all sinners is something that is not that difficult to demonstrate. That we are unable to free ourselves from sin is also obvious. That can all be seen by simply looking at our own lives honestly. It therefore follows that we all need a saviour to rescue us from our enslavement to sin. That is all that is needed to show the necessity of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Christ Jesus as a redeeming act.

There is no necessity to hold onto a particular interpretation of a collection of mythic stories that in poetic terms express what we already know, that we are all sinners. We are fallen, that doesn't necessarily mean there was a Fall.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

If a literal Genesis is essential to Christianity then Christianity is false, because Genesis is not literally true, any more than grass is blue. It really is as simple as that. If evolution screws your theology, then it's tough titty - the real world doesn't give a monkeys about your theology.

Posted by Timothy the Obscure (# 292) on :

Jamat, it looks to me like you keep coming back here switching between half-baked pseudoscience and bonehead literalism because you're trying to convince yourself of something you know in your heart is indefensible. I'm sorry your faith is so fragile it can only be sustained by believing six impossible things before breakfast.

Posted by Palimpsest (# 16772) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
[QUOTE]

You are a sinner so am I. Sin is our daily reality. So,no fall,no sin,no gospel. The gospel is in essence that Christ came,died a death that atoned for sin, rose as proof of the Father's approval of his sinless life and cosmic mission. None of it makes any sense at all without Genesis. Talk as many will of senselessly wooden interpretation, the alternative is a rationalising away of sin and the denial of the need for Christ.

With Genesis and only with its truth is there a way to make sense of why we are like we are and why the advent and intervention of God in sending Christ,can give us hope.

One of my greatest battles when I first came to faith was to recognise how utterly programmed I had been into naturalism and now faced with an epiphany that Christ was in fact a living reality I realised one thing needed to give way. Believe me I did not accept Genesis easily but the lie of evolution did fall away in the end. If it is true then,quite simply,God is not. We all need to make our own peace with that.

I have made mine and because I do not know your journey I cannot judge yours other than what you posted here. The only thing I would say to you is that the promise that if one loves truth then one will know it has been a saying of The Lord Jesus that has never let me down. And a correlative openness to correction is a necessary complement to that.

I am not a creationist in the sense of preoccupation with their concerns or an apologist or any kind of expert. I am simply someone who over 40 years of a belief in Christ has experienced many personal affirmations of his reality. I am committed absolutely to what he has shown me and one of those non negotiables is the Bible in its entirety.

So, Palimpsest,I wish you well.

Should you wish to deny the facts of the universe to cover the voids and contradictions in your religious belief, good luck with that. I don't chose to believe things which requires lies to withstand examination.

If you don't know my journey and are not judging me then don't say my disbelief in your theory is due to a fear of having to acknowledge God was responsible. Such disparagement is not the mark of a well wisher.

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

That's fine by me. Since you seem to have taken offence there is a forum where snide dismissiveness is acceptable.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
That we are all sinners is something that is not that difficult to demonstrate. That we are unable to free ourselves from sin is also obvious. That can all be seen by simply looking at our own lives honestly. It therefore follows that we all need a saviour to rescue us from our enslavement to sin.

Only if there is some reason we need to be rescued, and there is something saying that this need must be fulfilled, and means will be provided to fulfill it.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Doublethink

quote:
Why can't Genesis just be an extended parable to explain the existence of sin - I don't see why it needs to be literally true to explain sin.

The problem, Doublethink, is that it has been woven into a theological system, The Doctrine of Original Sin, based upon an historic event: humanity's fall from sinlessness, which has compromised the perfection of God's creation. ISTM the proposition that human beings and creation ever existed in such a state is simply not true. It does not help us understand the origins of sin, of what God thinks about sin and sinners, and what the role of Christ was/is in dealing with it. I fail to see how the sin of Adam can be regarded as a parable concerning the existence of sin, its origins, and where responsibility lies for the existence of sin. Even in recognising sin as an entrenched feature of the human condition it cops out by suggesting there was a time when it was not the case i.e. as a myth it's faulty. It really is best set aside.

What intrigues me, as I have written on other occasions, is that Adam's sin does not seem to feature as a core element in Judaism, there is no reference to Adam between early Genesis and Romans, so it does not feature in the teaching of Jesus in the gospels, nor even by Paul in Acts, as far as I can remember. I doubt, therefore, that Jesus had a notion or original sin nor, consequently, that the restoration of a state of paradise was part of his mission. That is not to say dealing with sin was not a major concern of the OT or the mission of Jesus.

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:

What intrigues me, as I have written on other occasions, is that Adam's sin does not seem to feature as a core element in Judaism, there is no reference to Adam between early Genesis and Romans, . [/I QB]

Job 33:31

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:

What intrigues me, as I have written on other occasions, is that Adam's sin does not seem to feature as a core element in Judaism, there is no reference to Adam between early Genesis and Romans, . [/I QB]
Job 33:31

Sorry, That was Job 31:33

Posted by Louise (# 30) on :

Hosting

A hostly reminder to people to take any personal component of their argument off to Hell.
cheers,
L
Dead Horses host

Hosting off

Posted by Net Spinster (# 16058) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:

What intrigues me, as I have written on other occasions, is that Adam's sin does not seem to feature as a core element in Judaism, there is no reference to Adam between early Genesis and Romans, . [/I QB]
Job 33:31
Sorry, That was Job 31:33

I think that depends on whether the verse is referring to 'Adam' the character or 'adam' which is the Hebrew word for 'man'.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Re Job 32:33. Thanks Jamat and New Spinster. I note that most translations eschew Adam as against King James. I'm not, however, in a position to adjudicate on the matter, not being a Hebrew scholar. That said, the Job reference is at best contestable, and can't be taken as a particular theological position either supporting or refuting the doctrine of original sin.
I remain most intrigued as to the route by which Paul re-introduced Adam to the biblical narrative, given its previous long absence.

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
Re Job 32:33. Thanks Jamat and New Spinster. I note that most translations eschew Adam as against King James. I'm not, however, in a position to adjudicate on the matter, not being a Hebrew scholar. That said, the Job reference is at best contestable, and can't be taken as a particular theological position either supporting or refuting the doctrine of original sin.
I remain most intrigued as to the route by which Paul re-introduced Adam to the biblical narrative, given its previous long absence.

Well, I think it was his Jewishness. He also argues on the basis of Abraham's faith that believers who exercise faith are Abraham's children. Jesus also did this in the triumphal entry when he stated that the stones could be children of Abraham. The point was that faith is rewarded. It just seems to me that Adam is seen in the same midrashic way, as a progenitor whose heritage has been reversed in its impact by those who have faith in Christ Jesus. The Jewish pilpul logical method is never far from Paul's reasoning since it is obviously mostly for an audience of Jews and Gentile proselytes that he wrote. When the audience is clearly gentile, his task is to persuade that through Christ, they (we) are included in Jewish promises and so he argues the case from a Jewish position.

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
Jamat, it looks to me like you keep coming back here switching between half-baked pseudoscience and bonehead literalism because you're trying to convince yourself of something you know in your heart is indefensible. I'm sorry your faith is so fragile it can only be sustained by believing six impossible things before breakfast.

Well I think you are perfectly entitled to defend your view. Perhaps though, another way to look at the matter is that my convictions can withstand any kind of ad hominem battering because they are grounded in the truth. I am quite used to being called an ostrich for not believing evolution. But consider what is denied is only a thought system that no one can prove either way in the same way that no one can prove conclusively that the Bible is reliable to everyone's satisfaction. But I do not need this proved in a material sense as it has been proved to me many times in a spiritual sense.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Originally posted by Jamat,

quote:
But consider what is denied is only a thought system that no one can prove either way

A bit off the mark there. Christianity is a "thought system" as is Buddhism and Islam and Hinduism and etc. Science is not a belief system. It is controlled observation, repeatable experiments; it is a methodology. The science you deny in evolution uses the same methodology in the science that finds vaccines and the science that keeps the wings from vibrating off the aeroplanes in which we fly.

Posted by BereaN (# 18281) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:

What intrigues me, as I have written on other occasions, is that Adam's sin does not seem to feature as a core element in Judaism, there is no reference to Adam between early Genesis and Romans, . [/I QB]
Job 33:31
Sorry, That was Job 31:33

1 Chronicles 1:1 - Adam, Seth, Enosh...

Luke 3:38 - the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Jamat,

quote:
But consider what is denied is only a thought system that no one can prove either way
A bit off the mark there. Christianity is a "thought system" as is Buddhism and Islam and Hinduism and etc. Science is not a belief system. It is controlled observation, repeatable experiments; it is a methodology. The science you deny in evolution uses the same methodology in the science that finds vaccines and the science that keeps the wings from vibrating off the aeroplanes in which we fly.

There is lots of science I do not deny but exult in. Getting somewhere by plane rather than having to swim is a case in point. However, you know what I mean when I say evolution as a thought system is not subject to experiment. Ecoli mutations don't impress me as proving evolution. No one I know denies that viruses mutate either but that doesn't show we evolved from a common ancestor which isn't that surprising when the Bible says we didn't.

Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :

Evolution happened, and is fairly explained by the what we call the neo-Darwinian synthesis.

It has never worried me this is contrary to some strict readings of the bible - my faith, such as it is, is dented by other issues.

Posted by Soror Magna (# 9881) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
... However, you know what I mean when I say evolution as a thought system is not subject to experiment. ....

I think I know what you mean: you mean we cannot make another planet and re-run the evolutionary processes that happened on our planet, so therefore there's no way to "prove" humans and all other life forms evolved from common ancestors. And if we did find another planet and could watch life evolve over millions and millions of years, it is exceedingly unlikely that humans exactly like us would evolve there, so even if a wide variety of life forms evolved from common ancestors on another planet, you could still claim that there was no "proof" that humans could have evolved from other species.

That's the same silly argument my father used to assert that smoking had never been proven to cause lung cancer in humans. The fact that animal experiments did show a link between smoking and lung cancer, wasn't "proof", because the experiments were not done on humans. Conveniently, since it would be unethical to do such an experiment on humans, he could also confidently assert that there never would be "proof" and keep on smoking. [Roll Eyes]

The fact is that there are lots and lots of areas of science where we cannot do what you would consider an experiment e.g. astronomy. We can't make another sun but nonetheless, we have a pretty good idea of how the sun formed and what is going on in it, and we're also pretty damn sure that there was no earth or water around when the first stars formed. Do you have a problem with modern theories of star formation, since they also clearly contradict the Genesis myth?

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
However, you know what I mean when I say evolution as a thought system is not subject to experiment.

I accept that there are some uses of the word "evolution" beyond the purely biological that are based on some very difficult to prove ideas. People talk about the evolution of culture and ideas, which has some value in sociology and similar fields of study, but is a far more complex system than biology. I've seen plenty of examples of people assuming that the most recent developments are superior to older forms (whether of life forms or ideas), or that there is some inevitable progress within evolution.

quote:
Ecoli mutations don't impress me as proving evolution. No one I know denies that viruses mutate either but that doesn't show we evolved from a common ancestor

You're right, mutation of viruses or bacteria don't prove anything, in a technical sense science is unable to prove anything. Bacteria do allow us to study evolution though - they have a short generation time so can observe changes over the timespan of research projects, we can get large populations that can be divided and put into multiple environments to see how different selection pressures affect the sub-populations etc. We can, of course, do similar studies on higher plants and animals - flies, fish, peas etc. These experiments demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that mutation of genetic code generates new ways of coding proteins that change the organisms, that the versions of new genes which come to dominate in the populations are responses to environmental pressures. Basically, they demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt all the basic requirements for evolution by natural selection.

Similar demonstrations beyond all reasonable doubt that particular organisms evolved from a common ancestor requires additional evidence, including analyses of the genes of living organisms, the genes of dead organisms (if available), and a fragmentary fossil record.

quote:
which isn't that surprising when the Bible says we didn't.

I think what you mean to say is that it doesn't surprise you as you're interpretation of the Bible says we didn't.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Actually, Jamat, the bible says the vegetation sprang from the ground and we were made from the dust of the ground. So we are plants?

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Actually, Jamat, the bible says the vegetation sprang from the ground and we were made from the dust of the ground. So we are plants?

You are winding me up, right?

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

Hi Alan, Compliments of the season to you. The following from Jerry Coyne's book "Why Evolution is True"

quote:
True, breeders haven’t turned a cat into a dog, and laboratory studies haven’t turned bacterium into an amoeba (although, as we’ve seen, new bacterial species have arisen in the lab). But it is foolish to think that these are serious objections to natural selection. Big transformations take time—huge spans of it. To really see the power of selection, we must extrapolate the small changes that selection creates in our lifetime over the millions of years that it has really had to work in nature.

When he says that it is foolish to think these are serious objections etc, that is a highly contestible statement. He is saying in effect, we KNOW evolution happened we just don't quite know how yet. He is really using the assumed fact of evolution to argue the point.

Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :

But we extrapolate from the small changes we observe over lifetimes in plenty of fields other than evolution. For example, nobody has observed mountains springing up from two tectonic plates colliding, but we extrapolate from what we *have* observed - mountains increasing in size by relatively small amounts - to produce an explanation for how mountains formed.

Likewise, we extrapolate from the mutations we can observe in things like bacteria, fruit flies and so on, to produce the theory of evolution by natural selection.

I'm sure this has been said before on this thread, but I think the problem is that you (Jamat) see observed mutations as a qualitatively different thing from what would be needed for evolution by natural selection to 'work' as a theory. But the vast majority of scientists see the difference as just a matter of scale.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

I mean have you any IDEA how long it takes a prokaryote to develop symbiosis with a non-photosynthetic oxidative proteobacterium?

A good billion years or two I can tell you.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Actually, Jamat, the bible says the vegetation sprang from the ground and we were made from the dust of the ground. So we are plants?
You are winding me up, right?

Rather I was making a point.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Originally posted by Jamat,

quote:
But consider what is denied is only a thought system that no one can prove either way
A bit off the mark there. Christianity is a "thought system" as is Buddhism and Islam and Hinduism and etc. Science is not a belief system. It is controlled observation, repeatable experiments; it is a methodology. The science you deny in evolution uses the same methodology in the science that finds vaccines and the science that keeps the wings from vibrating off the aeroplanes in which we fly.
There is lots of science I do not deny but exult in. Getting somewhere by plane rather than having to swim is a case in point. However, you know what I mean when I say evolution as a thought system is not subject to experiment. Ecoli mutations don't impress me as proving evolution. No one I know denies that viruses mutate either but that doesn't show we evolved from a common ancestor which isn't that surprising when the Bible says we didn't.

No, it doesn't, but ERVs and human chromosome 2 damned well do.

Evolution is based on more than one line of evidence.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

The Bible says that Jesus believed in God the Killer.

Posted by Jamat (# 11621) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
The Bible says that Jesus believed in God the Killer.

I guess you could argue that all death is caused by God; you could also argue that my garage is mine to clean out. Regarding the dust of that ground though. In a materialistic sense my molecules could have been part of the carbon in trees. The whole issue is that we are more than the molecules that we consist of. Hope you have a great festive season, Martin, Lil Buddah and Karl.

Posted by Martin60 (# 368) on :

And yourself Jamat. I wouldn't argue that, no, beyond the fact that the act of creation makes it contingently so.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
The whole issue is that we are more than the molecules that we consist of.

Not arguing against this.
Happy Christmas to you as well.

Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on :

I'm always puzzled by the idea that anything in nature, which we do not yet, and may never, understand, requires the intervention of the Creator at any point.

I would have said that the Creator is, being supremely capable, able to initiate and sustain any intended series of results without specific intervention.

I see evolution as a example of artistic economy - within a universe of unlimited magnificence.

(posted here because the topic was unwelcome where it was originally, probably irrelevant anywhere)

Posted by Waw consecutivum (# 18120) on :

STM the Garden of Eden story is a myth, therefore no more historical than the War of the Ring in The Lord of the Rings.

Adam = red earth, man
the woman = a woman
garden of *eden* = garden of *pleasure* (whence the Vulgate "paradisus voluptatis")
the talking snake is the same kind of animal as the talking horse of Achilles, or the talking birds that Sigurd hears, or the talking donkey of Balaam in Numbers 22.

The story is no more contrary to evolution than the flying dino in TLOTR is contrary to evolution: a narrative about events that make no claim to being historical, cannot be contrary to historical info.

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