Evolution & Creationism: Why can't people believe both?

Where in the Bible does it specify exactly HOW God placed Adam and Eve on earth? Ever source I've queried so far either doesn't know or says it doesn't. So, who's to say he didn't have one celled organisms evolve into Adam and Eve? It certainly doesn't contradict that idea.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Like having today, a one world religion, one world we were born to with only one book, one religion and one god, known throughtout all of human history. But that didn't happened, instead we are born to a world, with conflicting religions, with a human history of thousands of gods, and religions, which have created conflicts, wars, crusades, inquisitions, wich burnings, herectics, etc....

On the other hand, evolution is all about progress thanks to fossils... and new discoveries...for the sake to survive.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

no, but it turns out that when you do some calculations based on how the bible says things happened, you come up with stuff like the earth is only around 6,000 years old and god created the earth in 6 days. scientific evidence directly contradicts this. so then, religious people say, "well they dont mean for you to take that part of the bible literally". however, when it comes to an issue like abortion or homosexuality, religious people start squirting out scriptural quotes all over the place demanding that they be taken literally and seriously. so science remains the same, and religion requires selective interpretation. if science is understood to be correct and the bible be made to correspond with scientific findings, then the bible needs to be interpreted extremely and in a specific way. that begs the question of whether the bible is literal or subject to many different interpretations. if the latter is true, then it is possible to interpret the bible to justify any end whatsoever, and it becomes a meaningless document with no relevance to anyone other than the individual who is interpreting it. yet scientific fact remains something that people can come to consensus about. so if you have to convolute the bible in order to make it agree with science, why dont you just accept science in the first place and forget the bible?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Hmmmm! nice quote looks very familiar

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

Godless

 

- It says Adam was made out of sand or clay and that God breathed life in his nose, then Adam got lonely and God created Eve out of one of Adam's ribs.

Only die-hard litteralists believe this isn't metaphorical, though

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

The problem with religion is what parts of it do you take literally? Nobody appears to take the slavery parts literally but they take the homosexual ones literally even in modern society.

Moderates and fundies in this respect can not win. Moderates aren't true to their good book and fundies are simply idiots.

So in essence, you really can't reconcile creationism with evolution unless you make another religion that combines it.

 

Just a fan.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

 

In the context of an accurate depiction of natural history, indeed - forget those parts of the bible.

As literature, and as the source of an occasional nugget of wisdom and poetry, it has some value.

I wouldn't toss out Moby Dick just because Melville spent pages and pages defending the idea that a whale is a fish.

 

yeah, but cherry picking doesnt lend authority to a document or body of literature. if you read genesis, twist the living hell out of it to force it to agree with what is true in terms of modern science, then why cant you just interpret any of it in any way you want? and if you can then interpret it in any way that you want, how can you ever expect to be taken seriously when you quote the bible as a source of moral or factual underpinning for any other idea?
nobody is trying to make laws based on what Melville said in Moby Dick. so tossed out the window or not makes little difference. its a work of fiction and is viewed appropriately.

 

Dawkins - Religion is a form of child abuse

 

I don't use the bible as underpinning for any moral or factual ideas myself, I consider it largely a work of fiction with a few historical accuracies, many embellishments, little bits of worth here and there, and a whole lot of idiocy you'd expect from ignorant writers centuries back. Definitely a mixed bag.

Someday I hope that it will be viewed as such by everyone - a collection of stories and writings by ancients - largely irrelevant to us, certainly not of "divine origin", but a literary curiousity with a few sublime passages, some very interesting stories, and some good moral ideas that have to be filtered out from among the many, many bad ones.

I'd rather live in a country full of the kinds of Christians that selectively and liberally interpret the bible than the ones that take it all literally. Hopefully religion will continue to become more humanistic and this particular book will become less and less an unquestionable source of authority, and we will look at it like we look at Homer (but Homer is much more fun to read).

 

The woman that discovered soft tissue in a t-rex bone is an evangelical Christian who also believes in evolution and a several billion year old Earth.

 

I wouldn't agree to that. You might aswell just read any pamphlet from your local council office to get just as much, if not more, value - and usually printed in just as many languages.

Sure, there's nothing wrong from a historical perspective of viewing a bible in the local museum along with ancient skulls, pottery and dinosaurs - but if it's wisdom and poetry you want, then just visit the local library and pick any one of a gazillion books.

 

How can someone who believes in evolution and an old Earth be evangelical? They are supposed to accept the word of the Bible to be absolutely true.

 

i would rather live in a country where people treat the bible like it should be treated - as a work of fiction that has lost its relevance to society as anything other than an entertaining bunch of stories.

 

That' silly - you dismiss it because you subjectively don't care for it. It's fine if you don't like it from a literary standpoint, but your subjective value judgements are just that - subjective opinion.

I don't care for the writing of Faulkner, but I'd never suggest that you might as well read any of the other gazillion American authors. If you like it, read it. If you like reading the Song of Solomon, read it. Just because it comes from a book that has a lot of other problems does not invalidate it's worth as literature.

 

Me too, but that will not happen in our lifetimes.

 

actually theres a good bit of speculation that the song of solomon is actually a bastardization of a hymn or poem about Astarte or Ishtar. many scholars believe that it seriously predates biblical writings and was co-opted by christianity (like so many other things) in order to give it similarities to paganism and make it more palatable to potential pagan converts.

 

She said the bible doesn't say exactly how God did it, so evolution could be the mechanism.

 

That is very interesting, and I wouldn't be surprised if it were the case. But it doesn't alter the fact that it is considered a book of the bible, and there are many others that have literary value. Ecclesiastes and Psalms immediately jump to my mind.