Making waves (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, June 19, 2013, 16:30 (3982 days ago) @ David Turell

dhw: Evolution says that kinds evolved from earlier kinds, not that they were "created" or "made" by God, and most important of all, evolution says that humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor, not that God specially created man out of the dust of the ground and made woman from Adam's rib. As I keep saying, long periods are not the issue here, which is no doubt why you prefer to cherry-pick that part of the text and gloss over the part which forms the basis of the biblical creationist (i.e. anti-evolution) argument. However, your fellow theist Tony acknowledges that the bible is anti-common descent, and since he first stated that the bible was not anti-evolution, I assume that he now recants. You will not recant because you are as stubborn as I am!-DAVID: Isn't the theory of theistic evolution a form of creationism? Then the bible is correct.-Which theory of theistic evolution? To avoid convoluted arguments about "kinds", let's cut to the major controversy: us humans! A theistic version would be that God created the mechanism for evolution, which he implanted in the earliest forms of life. These then evolved in an unbroken succession all the way through millions of different species right through to us: common descent ... we and the chimps go back to homochimpo, who goes back to bac(k)teria and God's amazing mechanism. But, disregarding all the other "kinds" just to keep this simple, the bible tells us that God specially created humans. There is no way you can twist Genesis to say that it means anything other than special creation, and if you argue that it doesn't actually mean what it says, you're simply saying the bible is not anti-evolution because we should ignore what it says and make up our own version. If God created the evolutionary mechanism, but stepped in to do a bit of separate creating whenever he felt like it, with us as the prime example - which is perhaps Tony's belief and yours ... the bible would indeed be correct. But separate creation is anti-evolution. Ergo the bible would still be anti-evolution.