Life-How Did It Get Here,By Evolution Or By Creation?

Question

Today, most prominent “Christian” religious groups seem willing to accept that God must have used evolution in some way to create life. Some teach that God preprogrammed the universe to develop in such a way that living things inevitably evolved from lifeless chemicals and eventually produced mankind. Those who subscribe to this teaching, known as theistic evolution, do not feel that God interfered with the process once it started. Others think that, in general, God allowed evolution to produce most families of plants and animals but occasionally stepped in to move the process along.

The Marriage of Teachings—Does It Work?

Is the theory of evolution really compatible with the teachings of the Bible? If evolution were true, then the Bible’s account of the creation of the first man, Adam, would be, at best, a story meant to teach a moral lesson but not intended to be taken literally. (Genesis 1:26, 27; 2:18-24) Is that how Jesus viewed this Bible account? “Did you not read,” said Jesus, “that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has yoked together let no man put apart.”—Matthew 19:4-6.

All the above material is a quote from http://www.watchtower.org. Does anybody else feel that evolution is a false teaching?

Answer 1

While I do not necessarily accept the doctrine of the Jehovah's Witnesses, I do not believe that evolution explains the origin of life--either something is alive, or it's not, it doesn't evolve into being alive.

Answer 2

For me , I believe that life begins with creation. God is my creator from birth and my provider till death.

Answer 3

Let me repeat your question, and answer it with an equivalent one to show that you already know the answer:

Your question:

>"Life - How did it get here, by evolution or by creation?"

Equivalent:

"A baby - How did it get here, by childbirth or by creation?"

*ALL* Christians (as far as I know) would gladly answer *BOTH*.

They would fully accept the scientific understanding of the fully natural process of human reproduction and childbirth that produces the biological entity we call a human being (a baby) ... while at the same time believing fully that there is something spiritual, "beyond biology", in a human being that is created by God.

A Christian has *NO* difficulty reconciling both concepts. They are not *FUNDAMENTALLY* incompatible.

It is actually a far *smaller* leap (far less *personal*) to accept the scientific understanding of the fully natural process of evolution that produces the biological entity we call the human species ... while at the same time believing fully that there is something spiritual, "beyond biology", in the human species that is created by God.

A Christian who is intellectually capable of reconciling personal creation with biological childbirth, should have *NO* difficulty reconciling special creation with biological evolution. They are not *FUNDAMENTALLY* incompatible.

The incompatibility arises only if your only way of understanding the notion of special creation, is by a word-for-word *LITERAL* understanding of the Bible. That there were *LITERALLY* two human beings, *LITERALLY* named Adam and Eve, who were simply hand-made by God along with all the other species on the planet, as well as the planet itself, the oceans, sun, moon, and trillions of stars and galaxies that we now know to exist ... in the course of a *LITERAL* week, exactly 77 generations before Jesus (all calculations of a 'young-earth' age of the universe of only 6,000 years, are based on the *LITERAL* naming of generations from Adam to Jesus). Only if that is your only way of understanding the Bible, does evolution become incompatible with it.

But such a *LITERAL* (to the point of being childlike) understanding of scripture not only leads to truly BAD science, but it leads to truly BAD theology as well. It leads to the image of a weak God ... a God that works in timescales of human generations ... thousands of years (less than 10,000) instead of *billions* of years (more than 14 billion) ... a God that created a number of species small enough to fit on a large boat, rather than the *millions* of species we now know to exist ... a God so insecure that He must put humans through constant "tests", such as Adam's test in the Garden, or Abraham's "test" of faith ... and a God so petulant as to punish humans cruelly for failing these "tests."

An infantile understanding of the Bible leads to an image of a infantile God.

This is why it absolutely baffles me why Christians do not rebel against the simplistic way that religion is taught in this country by so-called "religious leaders." Gone are the deep theologians like Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine ... instead we have Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, or Kent "Dr. Dino" Hovind. At the very time that scientific thought has *progressed* over the centuries ... theological thought has *regressed* to what is called today "fundamentalism" ... a word I put in quotes because the "fundamentals" of religion are apparently not *moral* teachings that are *supported* by scripture, but the literal *people* and *events* described in the scripture itself. The scripture itself has become more "fundamentally" important than the lessons it teaches. The Bible itself has become more important than God.

Is that really how Jesus viewed the Bible? Read that passage from Matthew again. In describing the essence of marriage, when Jesus says "For this reason ..." what reason is he referring to? The fact that God made humans *biologically* male and female? If Jesus was referring to the *literal*, *biological* differentiation between male and female, then the same lesson would apply to chimps and rabbits and frogs and dung beetles ... all of which have males and females. No, Jesus is referring NOT to *biological* differentiation between males and females, but to the separation of *souls* ... the root of our *spiritual* yearning to find and cling to someone *fundamentally* different from ourselves. It is *SO* much more powerful to understand the story of Adam and Eve as *allegory* ... that God recognized that a solitary soul is a sad thing indeed. That we seek others who are *spiritually* distinct ... not just *biologically* distinct (any horny toad, rabbit, or goat can do that).

Jesus *GETS* it. A *literal* reading of scripture is an *impoverished* reading.

That is why it is so disgusting to see so-called "Christian leaders" take this very beautiful passage and re-interpret it as Jesus advocating the prosecution of homosexuals ... as if Jesus was saying that the important point of the story of Adam and Eve was that Adam had a p***s and Eve didn't! Read it again. It is about Jesus pointing out the beauty and sanctity of a *spiritual* union between two distinct souls ... not *biological* union between two organisms that can have rabbit s*x that results in babies ... any rabbit can do that.