10 Dangers of Theistic Evolution
The atheistic formula for evolution is:
Evolution = matter + evolutionary factors (chance and necessity + mutation + selection + isolation + death) + very long time periods.
In the theistic evolutionary view, God is added:
Theistic evolution = matter + evolutionary factors (chance and necessity + mutation + selection + isolation + death) + very long time periods + God.
In this system God is not the omnipotent Lord of all things, whose Word has to be taken seriously by all men, but He is integrated into the evolutionary philosophy. This leads to 10 dangers for Christians…
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This entry was posted in Apologetics, Creation Compromises, Creation Worldviews, Evolution, Theology and tagged 10 dangers, Apostle John, Biblical Chronology, Biblical Teachings, CMI, Creation Ministries International, Doctrine of God’s Incarnation, evolutionary factors, Finding God, God of the Gaps, Jesus’ Work of Redemption, Misrepresentation of God, Missing the Purpose, omnipotent, Prime Cause, theistic evolution, Werner Gitt. Bookmark the permalink.
41 Responses to 10 Dangers of Theistic Evolution
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Number 8: “God created the earth first, and on the fourth day He added the moon, the solar system, our local galaxy, and all other star systems.”
The problem of this view expressed in #8 runs roughshod over other Divine truths: It obliterates the idea that God is Eternal. If nothing existed before this earth, then we have a God that has been floating around for eternity with nothing to do, until one moment, the concept of “earth” entered His mind. But the view that the other galaxies have been in existence for trillions of years and longer, fits just fine. The view exressed in #8 is too egocentric, and reflects man’s finite mind.
Ralph, God wasn’t occupying eternity with “nothing to do,” before Creation. Before Creation took place, there would have always been a perfect fellowship within the Trinity. None of the divine persons were twiddling their thumbs.
Jonathan: I agree with your statement. The idea you speak against is very similar to the one that says God created man because He was lonely! To hold to either idea is to deny the dynamic work of God in creation, and the work of Jesus which holds the universe together and functioning in an orderly manner (Colossians 1:16-18).
I am saying that God had created zillions of suns with zillions of planets with life on them. He did not create all this within the six days of THIS earth’s creation. God is an eternal God, and the stellar evidence points to that fact that He has been around for zillions of years.
There is nothing evolutionary in the belief that God created many worlds over zillions of years. It is no threat to the creationist’s views to know that God has been a creator eternally.
And you base that on what? How is this nothing more than a blind statement of faith pulled right out of the air?
Exodus 20:11, “For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and made it holy.”
Note, He made the heavens (and all that is in them), and the Earth (and all that is in it) “in six days.”
Zillions of years? I’ve never once heard anybody suggest the Universe has existed for “zillions” of years. You do realize that your suggestion here makes the standard naturalistic model look like Young-Earth Creationism since it only suggests about 15 billion years.
Besides, no “evidence” can stand against what God clearly communicated in Scripture. If you reject Scripture, you reject the only world view that can even make sense of evidence.
Sure it does. There was an eternal relationship in which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all in perfect communication and love for one-another. That’s “something to do.”
“fellowship” does not displace “nothing to do”
There is no Biblical evidence to support the view that ALL creation began and was finished about 6,000 years ago.
Agreed. The ideas that all creation was done in six days and that the sun, moon, and stars were created on the fourth day distorts the meanings of the original Hebrew words.
I disagree. But since you’re making the claim, perhaps you can satisfy the burden of proof and demonstrate how the “original Hebrew” states that the Sun, Moon, and Stars weren’t created in the span of 6 days, as measured by Earth.
I’ve read Refuting Compromise a couple times, and would quickly recommend it to anybody interested in this topic.
well, since it happened 15 billion years ago, that would make sense
Besides, no “evidence” can stand against what God clearly communicated in Scripture. If you reject Scripture, you reject the only world view that can even make sense of evidence.
Nonsense.
To assume that the biblical worldview is the only one that make sense of the evidence you have to show the following
ALL other worldviews are wrong
The bible is right
The biblical god is consistent
All empherical evidence shows that naturalism is accurate
The bible is wrong in countless places
Genesis 30:37-39
And the most bizarre tale in the Bible goes too…this head-scratcher from Genesis, with its utterly bemusing explanation of the genetic code. Basically, Laban is taking all of Jacob’s beloved striped and spotted cattle. Jacob is left with boring old, plain-coloured cattle, which he doesn’t seem to like at all. So Jacob concocts a cunning plan: he gets some sticks and begins painting stripes on them. He then plants them next to his cattle. What Jacob thinks is that if he gets his cattle to look at the striped sticks while copulating, then they will give birth to striped young. Now, we’d all expect this idiotic plan to fail and Jacob to learn a lesson about something or other, but no it actually works. The cattle give birth to striped young, and Jacob is happy. What on earth is going on here? Anyone with the most basic understanding of genetics knows that this is bunk. We have known this since Mendal.
The biblical god is inconsistent in his actions.
He says do not kill and then not only kills, but instructs others to kill
You can’t speak of “empirical evidence,” since you lack a world view that can provide the necessary preconditions of intelligibility.
You must satisfy the assumption that your ability to perceive reality is sufficient to communicate the truth of reality.
You must satisfy the assumption that reality is even rational, and orderly, in addition to being discernible by a human mind.
You must satisfy the assumption that tomorrow will operate like today.
You must satisfy the assumption that your memory is generally reliable, which relates closely to your ability to know anything with certainty.
Your world view doesn’t provide answers to these questions, and therefore doesn’t permit you to speak of “empirical evidence.”
So, when Jesus dies for those 3 days. (actually 2, but lets not quibble) was the Trinity reduced to a Duality? If not, then Jesus was never was really out of the equation. In other words, although his body died, he was not actually dead. If it was, then the concept of god being unchanging is wrong.
Louis, no, Christ cannot die, but the body He assumed could. Likewise, your body will perish, but your soul will reside in one of two places afterwards.
Exactly, so if Christ cannot die, then he really did not make any sacrifice. And what is the significance of an all powerful timeless being being resurrected? He would not be omnipotent if he could not do that.
Also, since Jesus is all knowing, he “knew” he would be resurrected in 3 days. So, what was this supreme sacrifice? Being inconvenienced for 3 days?
Louis, the shedding of sinless blood is the sacrifice. Note how Christ was conceived, by the Holy Spirit (Luke 1:35) and not by man (Luke 1:34) so as to enter into the chain of death passed down through Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22). Further, Christ lived an entirely sinless life (Hebrews 4:15, 1 Peter 2:22-24), which makes His blood sufficient to save men from their sins.
Of course Jesus was conceived by man. His mother was Mary. Therefore, he received her genetic information as well. So, he had all of her flaws.
I mean it is all nonsense. Jesus is a myth, but within the confines of your story, Jesus would have had part of Mary’s bloodline as well.
Louis, you’re failing to consider that it’s in Adam that all die. Christ wasn’t conceived through the unclean act of copulation. Sin isn’t a genetic condition, it’s a spiritual condition.
Being born of a virgin, Christ inherited nothing from the sinful nature of man. That being said, as I pointed out in the previous post, He was still tempted as we are, yet was without sin.
You are free to call it a myth, but the rejection of Christ leads to complete epistemological absurdities on your part.
You are free to call it a myth, but the rejection of Christ leads to complete epistemological absurdities on your part.
Nonsense. There have been religions created by people since man started thinking. Regardless of all the absurdities of all the religions, including christianity, mankind has develped rules for society. Are the same in each society? Of course not, but they work on social concepts. We see these same concepts in many animal populations as well. Behaviors that protect the group prove beneficial, and are reinforced in each generation. Has nothing to do with a magic sky daddy
Louis, with all due respect I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Let me ask you a simple question to get the ball rolling – is it wrong to abuse children?
Yes, it is wrong to abuse children. Ironically, although your god claims to love children and all mankind for that matter, he still sent a flood to drown them all.
He killed the firstborn in Eygpt to make a point. He allowed the children of Job to be killed to make a point. He sent a bear to kill children for making fun of someone who was bald. These are all very loving and compassonate acts from a god who “loves” children.
There is a huge disconnect from what christians say they believe and what the bible tells us about the nature of god.
Louis says,
Why is it wrong, Louis?
Because it hurts the group. Which I have already answered. Playing games may be amusing for you, but it really shows a limited approach to debate.
If your god is the basis for all the right in the world, why is his message so inconsistent? He says do not kill, yet he kills and requires that others kill. He says honor your parents and then says to hate them.
It is laughable to try and argue that the biblical god is the foundation of morality.
My God is an eternal and omnipotent. He did not create “EVERYTHING” within a six earth-day window of time. To claim that He did, just because of one verse in Genesis is absurd. God is not “eternal” IF there was nothing in existence 7,000 years ago except a “Trinity”. What purpose would be served if God existed in the eternal past, yet had nothing but His Trinity self to “fellowship” with? That is a nonsense god.
Ralph, you should allow God to describe himself lest you break the second of the ten commandments (Exodus 20:3-4), and create an idol for yourself. In Genesis, we’re told what a “day” is; it’s one cycle of light and darkness (Genesis 1:4-5), evening and morning (Genesis 1:5, 8, 13, 19, 23, and 31). This cycle is measured by the surface of the Earth. We’re later told in Exodus 20:11, as part of the ten commandments “in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.” It was for this reason that God told the hearers of the law in verse 9-10 “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work.”
Please note that this exegesis isn’t based on a single verse, but rather the testimony of the entire canon of scripture. Consider Jesus’ own words regarding Adam and Even in Matthew 19:4 and Mark 10:6 “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.” Note here that Christ is testifying to what they have read, showing again the weight of the Mosaic text in Genesis. If Adam and Even didn’t show up until several billions of years after the creation of the Universe, then Christ is in error suggesting they were made “at the beginning.” But, if Christ is right that Genesis is reliable as a historical record of Creation, then it’s true to suggest that Adam and Eve were made at the beginning, since it was within the first week of Creation.
Do you think you can explain that God is eternal but had not created anything before 6000 years ago?
The entire universe gives evidence that God has been in existence for eternity. It takes billions of light years for the light to reach us on earth from the visible stars and galaxies. Do you proposse as other do that say that the light path was put in place in an instant, thus giving the “illusion” (a lie) that it has been there for billions of years?
I see you quote reference to the seventh day Sabbath. Do you keep this day holy or are you following man-made Sunday observance? (I keep the Sabbath day as did the Hebrews).
Can I explain God’s eternal nature? No. I can however defend the fact that He didn’t create the Universe until about 6-10 thousand years ago, as measured by the Earth’s reference. This was the case I put forth in my last comment.
The fact that God has existed eternally no more necessitates a Universe that is billions of years old than it does a Universe that is thousands of years old. Infinite cannot be reached by sequential-counting, and therefore “billion” is no more closer to infinity than “thousand” when we’re speaking of the longevity of the Universe.
If you pride yourself on following the Hebrew teachings regarding the sabbath, perhaps you will consider following their calendar too, which presently teaches we are in the year 5771.
A young-universe creationist is in a very difficult spot. If he holds that God created the light in transit, he also has to hold that we have no way of knowing that anything further than 10,000 light years away actually exists. We can’t see it. We’re not seeing it; we’re seeing an image that God created in transit. The light from it won’t reach us for a billion years.
You see, the argument from young-earthers regarding star light is that God not only created the galaxies in deep space, but He also created all the light between that star and earth. This is why we can see them now even though the universe is young.
My question is, how do you know the stars are really there? You don’t see the light of anything that existed. You’re seeing an image created in transit of an event– watch this– that never took place.
If all we’re seeing is an image that God created in transit, then the only way we’re going to see the actual thing that exists is if we wait around another billion years for the light of the actual star to reach us. Who of us believes the Lord will tarry that long? Not a billion years. Which means we’ll never see it, will we? We’ll never see what God actually created, not the thing itself.
Doesn’t that throw into question the existence of anything in outer space at all? Because, in fact, since we’ll never see the thing itself– and what we see is not the thing, but an image God created in transit– well then, why would God ever need to create the thing in the first place? The image would be fully adequate for God’s purpose. The only thing God would have to create is the light image, because we’d never see the thing itself anyway. But doesn’t the Scripture seem to indicate that what we see are the very things that God created?
You see, this “God created light in transit” view is kind of misleading, because we think of it like the steady glow of a light bulb. There’s a light bulb way out there in space and just a steady glow in between. God could put that glow from me to it and I could see the glow.
But the images we actually see in outer space– that, according to young earthers, were allegedly created in transit by God– are images of turbulent events, not just a steady glow.
Let me give you an illustration. Astronomers looking through their telescopes see a super nova explosion a billion light years away. (Super nova is when a star explodes and sends its material spewing out into space.) What exist now, at this moment, are the random bits of the old star which, allegedly, is the condition God actually created six to ten thousand years ago.
What this means is that the star the astronomers saw explode never existed. The super nova never happened. This seems to suggest that God created the illusion of the universe and not the universe itself, because that which allegedly exists, we will never see. That which allegedly exists, we’ll never see, and that which we actually see never existed.
If that’s the case, then I think it’s fair to ask ourselves what else we think exists, but doesn’t? How much more of the world is just an illusion created by God? How do we know what is real and what is not?
At this point, you can’t fall back on the Bible, for two reasons. First, the Bible seems to say that God created actual heavenly bodies, not just images to aid us in some way. Yet in this view, that is not the case. Second, even the words on the pages of my Bible reach my mind through light images. Why should I trust that what I see looking down when I’m reading is real when I can’t trust what I see gazing up at the night sky?
Doesn’t this begin to create a skepticism about the existence of real things? A skepticism that could collapse into solipsism, the theory that the self is the only thing that can be known: I’m the only one that exists, and my perceptions.
This view, then, undermines all observational disciplines, including science and history. Because we don’t know if we’re seeing the thing itself or merely a fabricated image, an illusion of something that doesn’t exist.
Let me say it again. What’s really there, we never see. What we do see was never there. There were no super nova explosions billions of years ago. Those things never happened. The only thing we see are images of explosions that never took place.
This would mean that virtually everything I see in the heavens– anything outside our solar system– isn’t real. It’s simply a light image of events that never took place, an illusion.
Why make stars so far away that we can’t see them? Why make events appear to our eyes that never happened? There’s a simple word for it. It’s called deception. That’s what God would be guilty of if that’s really the way it happened.
As an old-earther, I’m going to say that evidence for an ancient universe is in the heavens because scientific testing shows us that these stars are far away and their light takes a long time to reach us. Therefore, if we’re seeing light from those stars, and they’re a billion light years away, then those stars must have existed for at least a billion years.
The counter from a young-earther is, No, wait, you don’t understand. God actually created the light in transit. If God created everything in six days, then He had to create the star, too, because it does say He created the heavens and the earth. I’m thinking this is what they’re going to hold.
So, He created the star and the earth and the light in between, which sounds fine if you’re thinking of the star like a light bulb that is giving off a steady glow. But what we have in the galaxies are not just simply light bulbs giving off a steady glow, and you have this undifferentiated stream of glow flowing through the universe that God creates. Rather, what we have are light images of specific events in the universe, like super nova explosions, for example. So, if we see a super nova explosion that appears to be a billion light years away, this suggests, from my view, that it actually happened a billion years ago.
But a young-earther is going to have to say, No, that image is just something God created in transit. He just created it. It didn’t really happen because there was no “billion years ago.” Instead, the only thing that God actually created are all these little bits and pieces floating around in the universe that look like they were the result of that explosion that never happened.
You call that deception? That’s my point. God doesn’t do that, I suspect.
Genesis 1
1 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. (the fourth day)
The Hebrew reads: “And with the luminary, the small to rule the night, and with the stars.”
The English translation is not sufficient to convey the absolute truth. The Hebrew does not state that the stars were created at that time. There is no such wording as to create any such doctrine that God created everything in the universe at the time that He created this earth.
In John it states: “In the beginning was the Word,…” yet we do not establish that the beginning included God and this earth as having a common starting point. So by understanding the true meaning of the Bible, the phrase “in the beginning” has at least two different reference points for a beginning.
The numeric listing of the years according to Hebrew reckoning means nothing. The keeping of His Law, however, does. The Sabbath is God’s and He made it for man,… for all mankind who wish to be called His children. We are not at liberty to alter His law in any way.
What do you mean by the phrase: “as measured by Earth”
We can alter the law any way we please. There is no god the defines what the ‘LAW” is
Louis says:
October 30, 2010 at 2:13 am
Now that’s the long way to say what I said earlier; that God does not lie, by giving us an illusion. It concurs with my assertion that God is eternal and has been a creator since eternity.
It also seems that there is no “reply” button after the fifth comment in line.
I was pointing out the absurdity of the young earth mindset. There is no biblical creator
Louis, you created a strawman and argued against that. Nobody here has suggested God created light in-transit. Perhaps you can stick to the morality issue, and work up a solution for your position
Light in transit has been discussed by many young earth creationists. Ralph brought up the topic, I merely expanded on it.
Why should I stick with one topic. You have never been able to defend that inconsistencies of the biblical show his is not the foundation of morality
Louis, you’re bringing a charge against the moral-structure of the Bible and God’s behavior, yet you have provided no foundation from which to do so. Within the Christian world view, whatever God does He does for a morally-sufficient reason.
Now you may feel as though He’s just a big mean fellow, but you have nothing more than your arbitrary opinion on the matter to fall back on, and that is insufficient for anybody who seeks a rational explanation for things.
Which is why it is absurd. We are more moral than the mythical god of the bible because we understand why something is bad. Killing and abusing people is bad, you know it, I know it, but your “god” does not.
Why, according to the atheistic perspective, is killing and/or abusing “bad”? Suggesting “because it hurts somebody” as the answer assumes that hurting people is morally bad, which begs the question.
What have you got beside your own arbitrary opinion to substantiate the claim that abuse is a morally bad thing?
It is not just “my” opinion. It is the social norm of the culture I live in. That is why we send people to prison for killing and abusing people. And when people try to argue in court that the devil or god made them do something, we lock them up in the loonie bin or simply discount the argument.
I realize your viewpoint of god will permit him to do anything, but we do not accept that viewpoint as a way of life.
Louis, you’re not getting this, so I’ll try once more. I’m not asking whether it’s a cultural norm, or not. I’m asking what makes the abuse of another person morally wrong. I’m not asking how we treat those who do things that we consider to be wrong, I’m asking what standard you use to determine what is morally wrong.
Your unwillingness to answer this, after having been asked probably a dozen times only goes to show that your entire moral system is rooted in complete arbitrariness, giving no weight to any moral charge you bring against the Bible, or how God operated therein.
I have answered it repeatedly. You are the one with the inability to see beyond your sky daddy fixation.
Mankind decided for itself what is best. Not individuals, but the society as a whole. We do not hurt people in society because it harms the individual and therefore, the group. You see it in many animal societies as well. We simply put it in writing.
Your insistence that god is foundation for morality is flawed, because he is inconsistent. The fact that you refuse to accept it as an answer ot THE answer is your problem, not mine.
Well, since this topic got hijacked, I think I’ll just bow out and leave. No sense in hanging around here.