Journal Kiwi's Journal: Jesus loves us; evolution happened 5
For people who think that believing in evolution means denying that Jesus is the son of God, or that the Bible is inspired by God, please read the following link:
This link shows one Christian's resolution of the apparent difference between the account of Genesis and the evidence which science has unearthed.
- Sam
The line that gets me (Score:2)
Genesis 4:16-17 (NSRV)
So if Adam and Eve were the first 2 humans, where did the land of Nod get people from? And wouldn't Cain be committing incest? Obviously there were already people all over the place. Didn't they come from somewhere other than Eve? They had to.
Re:The line that gets me (Score:1)
To be more exact, Adam and Eve were the first Human. Later split into two.
where did the land of Nod get people from?
Probably Cain himself.
And wouldn't Cain be committing incest?
Absoulety. As did Seth. There was nothing wrong with incest until the Bible forbade it, which was well over two thousand years later.
Obviously there were already people all over the place.
Nope. The Bible explicitly states that noone was there (to tend to the ground).
Didn't they come from somewhere other than Eve?
Not a all. If they did, it would probably cause problems as to which family is better. Being the first generations were close relatives, fights were probably less common. Existant, but less common, as they were all closely related.
They had to.
Obviously not, because they weren't.
My take on evolution (Score:2)
(1): Extrapolating the current trends of a system backwards is often a poor way to get a real history of that system. While current evolution is a proven and necessary scientific principle (like dog breeding), extrapolating it backwards is a pseudo-historical theory. ("psedo-" added more because it deals with prehistoric events than any comment on its validity.)
(2): If God wanted to create the world so it seemed to be ten billion years old, He probably could do it quite well and we'd never be able to prove that He did it.
Personally, I think that they're both right. God doens't exist in our time frame; he sat down one day, and in six days of God Time created billions of years of Mortal Time, just like a novelist making whole lifetimes in a year or so.
I also think that humans evolved as animals, and that Adam was a singular created human who fell from grace--and who's DNA has, through Eve, spread to (presumably) everyone on Earth. (It's not a matter of faith, just an idea.)
Re:My take on evolution (Score:2)
I think a better way to handle the "it just looks like it's 4 billion years old" approach is to say that the apparant age of the earth is a deception done by the devil to make people atheists. The Bible does say that the devil is the prince of this world; why would it be beyond his ability to make everything just look like it is 4 billion years old, etc, so as to "deceive, even the elect, if such a thing is possible".
Of course, I don't go for conspiracy theories, so this theory is not appealing to me. I prefer the "God wanted something elegant, so he set up a complex system which would appear to conincidently make beings who just happen to be in his image" system. Of course, to give us free will, he can't make his appearance very conspicous; otherwise people wouldn't have a real choice whether to belive in God or not. Then again, God can still change chance events to help the faithful when needed.
- Sam
Shameless plug for MaraDNS; my completely free alternative to BIND [maradns.org] (since Slashdot now, by default, makes sigs invisible)