Does the Theory of Evolution Contradict the Bible?
The Simple Answer is No!
In Genesis, the word "day" is used for the "periods" of the creation. No one can demonstrate that, in the original text of Genesis, the word "era" or "eon" was not used. Those words were not in the vocabulary of the people of that time. Suppose that someone translating the original text came across a word that meant 'Era" or "eon" and didn't know what it was. Realizing from context that it was a period of time, suppose he substituted the word "day" in his interpretation. Certainly we will never find the original text of Genesis so my hypothesis can't be disproved. I don't know what happened a few thousand years ago, but it's a workable theory for me. Even the original scribe of The Book of Genesis may have interpreted what he was inspired to write and used the word "day" because he couldn't even imagine the gigantic period of time that it took for evolution to occur.
Atheists can't see the things that have happened over the millions of years of, even the relatively recent past of this planet, that God has seen fit to do to further the process of creating humans. As an example, his process of evolution created the dinosaur that became so large and powerful that they dominated the other species. He caused a large meteor or asteroid to hit the planet and wipe out the large dinosaurs about sixty-five million years ago. Dinosaurs are not extinct. The smaller dinosaurs survived and evolved into birds but the large dinosaurs were killed off in a very few days. You may ask why God used a large chunk of rock to wipe out the large dinosaurs? My only answer would be, "Why not?" You may also ask, why did he not just "poof" the modern world into existence? Aside from the obvious problems that not having ancestors would create, my answer would be that, in his time frame, he did just "poof" the modern world into existence.
Most fundamentalist Christians believe that scientific tests on the age of fossils like dinosaur bones are flawed. Some believe that scientists are trying to deceive us into believing something that isn't true. There's just too much scientific evidence that "the heaven and earth" started forming several billion years ago, that "evolution" took place, to accept that the universe has only existed for a few thousand years. There is the "Big Bang" theory that blends very well with the statement, "In the beginning God created the heavens and earth." There is one big question that scientific evidence can't explain. Why in the billions of years of history, there is no evidence that "sapience" ever occurred until a few thousand years ago. Why has "Sapience" only occurred once in all that time? It should have occurred millions of years ago and many times according to the theory of evolution, that is, if evolution were capable of creating it. Evolution is incapable of creating "Sapience." There is no credible evidence that "Sapience" ever existed before us. About the height of "Sapience" that evolution is capable of creating is the chimpanzee, the dolphin, or the parrot.
We have the attribute that the scientists call "Sapience." The Bible calls it "The Knowledge of Good and Evil." In the struggle of "survival of the fittest",
take note of how powerful a tool "Sapience" has proven to be! In just a few thousands years or so, "Homo-Sapiens" has so come to dominate the environment that the greatest accomplishments of the millions and millions of other species look like a bird's nest compared to The Sears tower by comparison. (I would use The World Trade Center as an example except that a few religious fanatics knocked it down a few years ago.) Evolution is incapable of creating "Sapience." God decided a few thousand years ago that it was time to introduce "Sapience" into the world.
I believe that evolution created the species, all except "Homo-Sapiens", that is. God created us and us alone in his "Sapient" image just as the Bible states. When I was a teenager in the "fifties", I remember the question coming up in a Sunday School class about who Seth, and Adam and Eve's other sons, mated with to continue the species. I remember the teacher explaining, "They married the daughters of the land." Since that incident I have never had a problem with the apparent contradiction between the Book of Genesis and the theory of evolution. I don't believe what some fundamentalist Christians believe, that Adam and Eve's children committed incest to continue the species. Incest is an abomination in God's eyes. Besides, modern genetic science proves that we are related to the other ape species. Our genes demonstrate that sometime in the past (one of) our ancestors and the ancestors of the other apes converge. Having sex with a brother or father causes genetic problems when a woman has a child. In the case of first cousins it is relatively seldom that it causes genetic problems. I believe that "the daughters of the land" were an ape species without "Sapience" that was created through evolution. The ape species that the sons on Adam and Eve mated with has become extinct because of the operation of the process of evolution, but their genes are in us. If God had created us totally separately we wouldn't have those genes. By mating with the ape species, Seth and the other sons of Adam and Eve passed on those genes and the "Knowledge of Good and Evil" to us. It is not "beastiality" to mate with a species that you can have offspring with. Today there is no other species that one of us could mate with that could produce offspring, but that doesn't make it impossible that a separate species that God created couldn't have mated with an ape species and created us.
It is time that modern religions started to acknowledge the truth that God has given to us over the past two thousand years since Jesus Christ walked among us. Evolution actually did take place and that evolution is God's process. The scientific evidence that it did occur may not be proof to you, but it is proof to me. We, all of us, not just the Jewish people, are God's chosen people.
Published by Joe Btfsplk
Computer Programmer for 45 years! View profile
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20 Comments
Post a Commentthey might be at least more than you!!!
(Part 2 of previous comment) ... than what Darwin imagined. Neither scenario can be proven, but when you take a good look at the obstacles to evolution (there are others beyond the complexity issue), it's miraculous how it's held up so long.
"Religion" is a pretty vague term and can mean many things. How you can saw (previous comment) that religion can be disproven is unclear unless you define it specifically. Proving the Bible historically inaccurate is something you can define and attempt, however you will find that Science textbooks have gone through more revisions in the past few decades than Biblical text ever has, and yet it stand without error or conflicts that can't be explained if you consider the context, word usage, and employ the same reasoning as you would reading anything else. You state that "complexity can arise" yet fail to offer an explanation how this can be, as no geneticist or biologist has been able to demonstrate or even come up with a plausible cause of the advances in complexity necessary for evolution to conceivably work. A careful look at the creation account in Genesis will reveal that life and the world we observe now as well as evidence from the past fits a lot better in that framework than wh
you are attempting to prove god, your method is by saying that sentience could not have arisen by itself thereby requiring a creator. (no different from creationists attempting to prove god by say this or that could not have arisen by itself eg codependance in organisms or the human eye so this must be the hand of god at work.) complexity can arise without miracles and just because we do not understand intelligence does not mean that it arose any differently. it does not prove god it does not prove religion or the bible. religion can be disproven because it holds theorys to be true whichy are always proven wrong, never ever has science changed because of religous discovery, always the opposite. god theorys always change to suit new facts, they never create their own facts, so they cannot be counted on to provide a real view of the universe.
anyway evolution is blind, it does not seek to make anything, it has no aims. it is just a process. there is no higher or lower, just adaption. by the way i was raised as a JW cultist, i do not discount god but rather do not believe in any theorys of god. 'if god exists he does not break the laws of the universe' (quote stephen hawking) i totally reject any biblical god. i believe that there is almost certainly something greater than just a sum of processes to sentience, but that it is governed by natural laws we just do not yet know of, not miraclous. just arisen like life arose from non living so conscious arose from non thinking. probably some form of continued existance, but we cannot know until we die or discover more scientifically. i like argueing about it though.
again u equate technology with intelligence, technology has been around for only a fraction of the time since hominids appearance (millions of years) and high technology less again. are u trying to say that prior to the invention of certain techs that humans were not intelligent, if so then how did they invent the techs. tech cannot be invented without intelligence thereby proving intelligence came first.
Why don't you just say that you are an atheist and let it go at that? I don't know if you were raised in a religious home or not, but you sound like one who could not resolve evolution with the Great Spirit so you discount religion. There is no way anyone is going to convince you that the Great Spirit is causing things to happen. You believe that everything happens by pure accident. When I was young, I turned from Christianity to atheism but after observing history, I couldn't resolve the things that I observed with pure accident. If we accept your argument that evolution happened by pure accident, how do you explain the billions of years when animals were evolving without any really intelligent species appearing until just a few thousand years ago? There would be evidence of an earlier civilization that reached an intelligence level approaching ours. A few thousand years is like a nano-second on the timeclock of history.
this is that inteligent brains are very expensive to run, in terms of calories. warm blood is required, and lots of protein. evolutionary survival is a precarious balancing act. improvements in one area are matched by cut backs in another. trade offs. the trade off for brains is the second most expensive organ to run, the digestive system. we have the shortest intestinal tract (ratio to body size) of any mammal including even carnivores. (herbivores could never become very smart due to their requiring complex digestive tracts, generally, though some large herbivores such as elephants have partially gotten around this problem), . animal brain complexity and intelligence is always in direct ratio to diet and digestive tract complexity. brain complexity:digestion:body size. these ratios are carefully balanced throughout nature and so clearly show the relationship between inteligence and brain complexity.
why do u continue to ask inane questions, you should be familar with the theory of evolution and high school biology that i should not even have to explain that. first of all you do not know how smart dino were, (we dont even know if they warm or cold blood) i know u were born a long time ago and are very old now but u should read some books from this century. brain size in not the only factor, i was just simplifying. brain size to body size ratio would have been more accurate. also brain wrinkling. in case u dont know what that is, well our brains are wrinkled up and convulated like retarded walnuts, all the way through. low animals like reptiles have smooth brain structure, with brains wrinkling more as we look higher. the difference is complexity of connections and density, and that = greater thinking ability. there is another reason for this as well.
The dinosaurs had brains much larger than ours and even today there are animals with nrains larger than ours. If brain size is the only factor in sapience or sentience (two different words) then why are they not smarter than we are?