Here is part two of the Creation Debate series. I hope you find it helpful!
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Z: If we reinterpret the "six
days" of creation into time periods, perhaps, millions of years
going on during those, "days" then we see that the
scientific point of view, that the earth is old, (once more, that
idea doesn’t fit the evidence, and evolution isn’t real science)
is completely logical from a Christian standpoint.
You can't believe the Bible and say
evolution happened. Six days translating into long periods of time
makes no sense at all. It is utterly impossible. Here's something to
think about: For one thing, bees supposedly evolved at the same time
as flowering plants. This makes sense, right? Well, there's a big
problem. There is one of many petrified forests, I think it is in
Arizona, and intermixed with the logs, are beehives. These logs were
dated to several million years before flowering plants supposedly
evolved, and the beehives were dated to the same age! This would mean
that bees would have to survive for millions of years before the
flowers evolved. This would be a problem for obvious reasons.
Here’s a few more things to think
about if each “day” represented millions of years.
If each day was really millions of
years, then are we supposed to work for millions of years and then
rest for millions of years?
Although light was created on day one,
it probably was not very organized light, like what plants need to
survive. Plants were created on day three, but the sun was made on
day four.
Now here’s the most important one for
me: The word used for day in the Hebrew is “yom”. This word
although it can sometimes be figurative, always means a literal 24
hour day if used with the words first or second or morning and
evening.
And the millions of years per day idea
also completely does away with the importance of the Gospel and
Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection. This is because
evolution depends on death for it to possibly function. (Survival of
the fittest.) The Bible says death is the consequence of sin. If man
hadn’t evolved (through survival of the fittest) to the point where
he could sin, where did death come from? In other words, death would
just be an ordinary and necessary part of life, therefore, why did
Jesus come? What was the point of his death on the Cross and
resurrection if not to rescue us from our sin and consequences of it?
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Z: I believe that the, big bang
really happened and that God created using the slow process of
evolution. In other words that, the almighty God created every living
species from perhaps a single cell and then perhaps occasionally
adding new DNA into animals, created all the diversity that we know
today.
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If you believe that, then you can have
no idea of how many changes it would require to change one animal
into another. There would have to be massive amounts of information
added. There has never been a mutation observed that added
DNA, although plenty have been observed that subtracted or changed
previously existing information. The fact is, one animal cannot
evolve into another. And this
idea is not only incompatible with science, but is also
completely unbiblical. The Genesis record says over and over, (in
fact it says six times in three verses,) that God made each of the
animals “according to its kind”. This means that evolution
couldn’t have happened and yet agreed with the Bible, because if
there were no “kinds” that were formed right then, then the Bible
wouldn’t have said that.
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And the apple was signifying sin, in
that the entire human population sinned at one time and that was how
mankind fell what I basically believe is this statement I got from a
very interesting book called, "Perspectives on an evolving
creation."
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The fruit, (not necessarily an apple)
definitely didn’t signify sin. It couldn’t have because the Bible
says that God saw His creation, and “it was very good”. If sin
had been a part of it, even in the form of a fruit, then He wouldn’t
have said it was “very good”. The sin didn’t lie in the fruit
itself because the Bible clearly says that the tree was the “tree
of knowledge of good and evil”. The sin lay in Adam and Eve
disobeying God’s command to not eat of that tree. Like I said, we
don’t know that the fruit was an apple, but that is irrelevant
because the Bible doesn’t attach any importance to what kind of
fruit it was- otherwise we would be told. However, I do believe that
there was a literal fruit, and also a literal Adam and Eve. What’s
interesting is that cultures all around the world have traditions
about this. We see it in their art especially. In China, the oldest
character, or symbol they used in their writing for the word “woman”
was a symbol that was clearly a woman standing beside a tree with
fruit on it and a snake in it. Also, a greenstone cylinder seal was
found near the ancient city of Nineveh. On it was depicted a man and
a woman, one on either side of a fruit bearing tree with a snake in
it. This could be something different, but it seems to possibly be
related to the story in Genesis. Of course, the story would change
over time, but we would expect to find some semblance of it. Also, in
many cultures an evil force or god is female, as in the Yin and the
Yang in China, or the evil spirit in Eskimo tradition which was
believed to hold all the animals captive during hard times. Could
this be because of the idea that sin entered the world through a
woman?
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"The view of evolution i
propose is what i will call theistically guided evolution. I define
theistically guided evolution as the view that all life on earth is
the result of the evolutionary process (descent with modification),
but in various places God guided or influenced this process. God
could guide the evolutionary means by mutating some gamete or even
adding new information to the gametes, thereby resulting in one
organism giving rise to significantly different offspring"
(Collins, p. 496) and here are a couple things to think about:
By definition I am a Creationist.
Defined, I use this ambiguous term to simply mean that I believe that
God created, but that he did not do it in a six day form. Instead, I
think he used the process of evolution to slowly create the animals
and humans he needed.
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God didn’t need anybody. He makes
this quite clear in the Bible. He simply created us for his own
glory. Also, even if Genesis is figurative, there is a major problem
with at least one of the most well- known supposed transitions: the
evolution of birds from flying dinosaurs. The Bible says that
God made birds on day five but all land-dwelling creatures on day
six. You can see the problem. If animals evolved, then unless flying
dinosaurs evolved first and then immediately changed into birds, it
would be impossible for it to follow your model, of each day
representing millions of years, since birds would have been created
before the dinosaurs from which they supposedly evolved.
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Basically it is defined in this
quote. “The view of evolution I propose is what I call theistically
guided evolution. I define theistically guided evolution as the view
that all life on earth is the result of the evolutionary process
(“descent with modification”), but in various places, God guided
or influenced this process. God could guide the evolutionary process
by mutating some gamete or even adding new information to the
gametes, thereby resulting in one organism giving rise to
significantly different offspring.” (Perspectives on an Evolving
Creation, p. 497) This I think gives a good idea to what an
Evolutionary Creationist believes.
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Like I’ve said before, there is no
such thing as an evolutionary Creationist. Theistically guided
evolution is completely un-biblical. You can't be a Christian and
believe evolution. Why? Because to be a Christian, you must believe
the Bible. Sure, there are obviously some places where it is clearly
figurative language, but the Bible gives no indication of this in the
Creation account. It is given us as a literal account of how God made
the world and everything in it. If you say that this is figurative,
then how much else can you believe? Is the Worldwide Flood just
figurative? The Tower of Babel? Is the Exodus figurative? What about
the parting of the Red Sea? Or the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai?
Or the walls of Jericho falling down? (By the way, clear evidence has
been found to support all these.) How about all the miracles Jesus
worked? And most importantly, the Resurrection of Jesus. Was that
just figurative too? If it was, then we’re in trouble. If Christ
didn’t rise, and there’s no resurrection then our faith is
worthless. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17 … If Christ is not
risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! In other
words, if we say that the Creation account isn’t true, then how do
we know that the rest of the Bible is?
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