just a thought for anyone who believes in evolution.
have you ever dropped a piece of china on the ground and watched it shatter? if yes- then try to remember if there was any particular pattern of the shattered china on the floor if no- then try and try to identify a pattern through the china.
its clear that if you drop a piece of fine china- or any glass item for that matter- and it breaks there will be NO PATTERN on the floor glass will be everywhere in no particular sequence. the evolution thery claims that everything came form a big bang- thats impossible because nothing organised and structured comes from chaos.
the planets are in one straight line- sun comes up moon goes down. there are 4 seasons if the big bang theory was true wed have everything out of order...
i cant possibly think anyone would believe that EVERYTHING we have (nature) was made outa a bang
I'm not sure that a big bang does contradict the idea of creationism. Perhaps its better not to make it into a sticking point? Even if a big bang was proven it would be more likley to support creationism rather than a random event based system of life.
sorry guys the last time i replied wasnt me, my bro accidently went on my account. anyayz a big bang cant be proven CS, cause its not true. lets not forget that these are all theories and have been for a very long time and will stay that way. and i agree with Suzanne 100%. i also have an important point to make, why are we trying to figure out how God created us? there are many other worthwhile things to think about. im not talkin about anybody in this site, im talkin about scientistis, etc. If we knew how everything is, then we wouldnt be awed by it and magnify God for his kindness and power. u get what i mean? i hope this helps. pray for me
i agree egyprincess i mean... instead of spending 10000000000 of dollars on trying to figure out how we came about... y cnt we just put that money and invest it into some cure for cancer? which brings me to another random point... just like cancer and these theories of evolution have been coming along for several SEVERAL centuries... maybe God just wants them to be kept a mystery i mean its good enough that he told us how he created us and everything else... he has no 'obligation' to tell us anything more right?
random verse: "Behold, I will bring it health and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth. " Jeremiah 33:6
...there are truly something that we just weren't meant to understand yet, and there are some times that we just aren't meant to be in perfect health... and that's all part of God's will that we are just too limited in mind to understand and one day when He chooses... He will explain it all to us and enlighten our eyes to the truth...
I agree, there have even been occassions in the bible where the Holy Spirit would tell the apostles not to do a certain thing or go a certain place.
Acts 16:6 "Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidded by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia."
Acts 16:7 "After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them."
There are somethings that God keeps from us, for our own good. And all things will be revealed to us in due time. Maybe He just doesn't want us to know yet...i mean sooooooooooooooo many people for centuries have been trying to find out...no one has. So my opinion is that God doesn't really want us to know some things just yet.
The fact is that none of us actually know how God created the world and it’s not always easy to distinguish how much in the Genesis story should be regarded as a journalistic account of what concretely and measurably happened and how much should be read as poetic metaphor.
Another point might be pondered too-- we are all citizens of our time as well as of our place. That is to say, the people who wrote the Bible stories, while they were presumably inspired by God, were not exactly taking dictation from God. They filtered their understanding of God’s Truth (which we should remember, surpasses all human understanding) through their understanding of the world. This understanding of the world was a product of the time and culture in which they lived, just as our understanding of today’s world is a product of the time and culture in which we live.
My knowledge of history, anthropology and sociology are limited to a few “required” undergraduate courses I took many years ago. So I am only passingly familiar with the prevalent beliefs of people in the ancient world of Old Testament times. And since I have no formal education in theology whatsoever, I don’t know what the “official” position of any church is in RE to evolutionary theory or so-called creationism.
My degrees are in mathematics (I work as a statistician) and science (a master’s and doctorate in the marine sciences, i.e., specifically, oceanography and estuarine ecology). As a trained researcher and credentialed scientist, I have always been disturbed by the assumption many well-meaning “religious” people make about the connection between accepting the scientific evidence of evolution and rejecting belief in God. I have, since my earliest childhood, clearly seen God’s reflection in the natural world. Indeed, it is the awe I feel when looking at individual creatures and at the intricately interrelated system that supports their existence that makes me certain that God is a reality: the Author of this web of life we today call the biosphere. I wonder at my fellow scientists who can look at this marvelous world or the wider cosmos around it and NOT see the Divine Creator-Force reflected there!
Yes, I am a citizen of my time, educated to see and interpret the world around me through the lens of 21st Century science. And I will be the first to tell everyone that neither evolutionary theory nor anything else in 21st Century science in any way denies, diminishes or obscures the presence of God in any corner of His creation. It is only that some individuals, both scientists and others, have blinded themselves to seeing Him there because they have made a conscious, deliberate, and totally scientifically unsupportable decision NOT to accept the possibility that God really "exists," or is accessible to human experience.
And I don’t think He cares a whit whether we think He created the universe directly and definitively or designed it to “evolve” over time. I think He only cares that we choose to see Him and love Him and serve Him, even as scientists, and especially, as stewards (caretakers) of all this glorious natural biosphere He created/evolved!
The only reason the churches have a dilemma with the theory of evolution is because those who support it generally dismiss any presence of god. That is the real problem. Whether or not there was a big bang; how it was started; whether or not the bang was started by god. These are all irrelevant. We don’t know how it happened, and we will never come to a conclusion while we are on this earth. The important thing is that we know God DID create this world. That is the one thing evolutionists don’t believe…
Your absolutely right CS… it is possible that we may discover what really happened. You’re missing my point however; all I meant is that whatever chain of events that lead up to the creation of the world were controlled by God. They surely were not coincidental unexplained forces of physics.
CS- One of our priests used to tell us that god created the big bang lol- it was sort of a joke because we were young and very confused about the two theories- the one presented by the church, and the one presented by scientists of the world- but now that I think about it could be true.
Grazing bear is right- no one knows how god created the world. Our minds can be seen as two dimensional and the way God works is kind of three dimensional. It’s hard to comprehend the way God works without having the same 3D ability as god!
there are SO MANY THINGS we will go through life not understanding, but we aren’t supposed to ponder on the thought for so long- after all that’s how the big bang theory probably began. An atheist scientist who had nothing better to do sat there and thought and though and thought and came up with a hypothesis which non-religious people simply accepted.
All sorts of religious profanation and heresies are a result of people over analysing what the church believes and asking themselves 'is it really possible?' yet the one thing they don’t realise is how limited humans are and how powerful God is in comparison to humans.
This is what I have been trying to say all along. ;D
Creation means that God created the world, that doesn't mean we know exactly how. I think you guys also went overboard with you idea of not pursuing science as a result. This is a great gift from God and we should pursue it because the more we know, the more it glorifies Him.
This actually remindes me of the problem of protestantism for instance the idea of salvation by works vs. grace. In trying to defend the truth we can take an unbalanced teaching and from my experinence I've found protestant teaching to be about 90% correct, they actually fall away in terms of the application and implications of the theology but you wouldn't know that and I am personally concerned about the nature of being contrary all the time.
Its not right to assume that because athiests say something its automatically wrong, if evidence says that something has happend, it has probably happened! :)
This cannot contradict the faith, athiests may paint it like it does but we know differently.
I get the feeling the central issue in the evolution vs. creation debate isn’t whether living things were brought into being instantly and directly through one creative act by God or whether He caused them to develop into the forms we see today through some process involving time and change. Since none of us were there to witness the act/process of creation, this speculation is really rather moot.
The real problem is that many people, for reasons that frankly don’t make logical sense to me, have drawn a line in the sand and placed “science” and “religion” on opposite sides, in apparent opposition to each other. Then the assumption is further made that scientists are Godless atheists and so anything “scientific” must promote a world view that denies the existence of God.
Because evolutionary theory has long been favored by the “science” faction, some churches and many religious people gravitate toward the opposite theory, i.e., creationism, not because they understand enough about either theory to make an informed choice of one or the other, but simply because they feel they must resist the propaganda of those atheistic scientists!
All of this seems to me to be rather unfortunate and quite unnecessary. There is nothing intrinsic in science that denies the existence of a “Prime Mover,” “Creator-Force,” or whatever concept you want to associate with what we most commonly simply call “God.” If you then accept that God exists, there is also no reason to deny the possibility that God can and sometimes does act “outside” of natural law-- to allow a Virgin birth, a resurrection, an ascenscion, etc. Since God “invented” the natural world, certainly He can also choose to break its laws or suspend its protocols.
So, science and religion occupy different realms— the natural and the supernatural, which may run together at times, or remain distinctly apart. As a scientist, I can pursue knowledge of the natural world and even come to the conclusion that the evidence points logically to either evolution or creation theory, while at the same time acknowledging that there is a whole other realm in which my worldly knowledge may not apply. I can thus be fully a Christian (with God’s help!) at the same time that I am a practicing scientist. There is no real conflict, no “line in the sand” unless I allow that hypothetical line to be drawn by others in my own mind and heart.
i guess the over all point here is that since we are all teh descendants of Adam and Eve, the founders of rebellion, we would go with any other theory to deny God as the Creator and i don't mean us as Christians, i mean 'us' as in to mankind 8)
Just thought I'd add a little to the discussion. Whether you believe in evolution or not the information in the bible doesn't contradict evolution for a few reasons:
1. The period of a day may not be 24 hours, this was proposed by St. Jerome back in the 5th century so its not like we're back tracking now. I can actually offer a longer winded proof but I'm hoping that this not needed but I find it very ulikley that the period was 24 hours. 2. In the bible the system of creation has produced species in the same order as scientific evidence has imposed on the theory of evolution. 3. In genesis the word used is actually not create but manufacture(another clue that points at evolution). 4. As previously mentioned the idea of mutations is something that has to have occured if we are to believe in the generation of differing races (unless you wanna believe Mark's phototransgens theory). ??? 5. We were discussing how man was created seperate to animals but this is not a TRUE representation of the full story of the creation of man as the creation of man is notes in chapter 1 first and you have to take the full account and not just one verse.
Again I stress that I am a fence sitter on this subject so no comments about me be an evolutionist mmmmmkay?
There are two accounts of the creation of man, one is physical and the other is spiritual (I think). Other than that I'm saying no more. If you want more info on orthodox evolution you'll have to find a russian orthodox person and have them explain it to you...
I might begin by stating that, if by evolution one is referring to the theories and teachings of Charles Darwin, the Orthodox Church surely does not subscribe to evolution in any manner. Orthodoxy firmly believes that God is the Creator of all things and that human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, are unique among all created beings. At the same time Orthodoxy is not literalist in its understanding of the accounts of creation in Genesis, and I have encountered writings by Orthodox Christians which attempt to balance the creation accounts with a certain ongoing -- evolutionary, if you will -- process which, on the one hand, affirms that while humans may have evolved physically under the direction and guidance and plan of the Creator, their souls could not have evolved any more than the powers of reasoning, speaking, or the ability to act creatively could have simply evolved. In such a scenario the Creator intervened by breathing His Spirit into man and giving him life, as stated in Genesis. Such thinking, however, while admitting the possibility that the Creator guided a process of physical evolution, is not identical with the theories of Charles Darwin, which in my limited understanding implies that man's soul also evolved and denies the active participation on the part of the Creator. This poses a variety of questions and problems beyond the scope of your original question.
In short, then, Orthodoxy absolutely affirms that God is the Creator and Author of all things, that He is actively engaged with His creation, and that He desires to restore His creation to full communion with Himself through the saving death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. This, unlike Darwinism, is not a matter of ideology but, rather, a matter of theology.
Orthodoxy has no problem with evolution as a scientific theory, only with evolution -- as some people may view it -- eliminating the need for God as Creator of All.
I hope this clears up the issue but on a sticky topic like this its best to consult your FOC before commiting to any kind of belief...
i agree wid CS and Grazing bear.. sometimes when i look at science i find it IMPOSSIBLE to understand why people even believe in evolution. surely the organisation of the periodic table and all the amazing things you learn in chemistry didnt create themselves. The periodic table, especially, is too perfect to be made by 'coincidence' or 'luck'.
I agree with what everyone says all the way. I believe that God created everything, and so on and so forth. But I have a question. I forgot where I heard this from, whether it be in the bible, or a bishop said it, or something, but I remember coming to this topic, and distinctly reading (or hearing) that we go along with the sciences that are around us, and I wanted to know if it was true. If I, by some amazing chance, remember where exactly I got my info from I'll be sure to post it up, but until then, please leave your opinions cause I'm really interested to find out. Thankies.
Yea sleepy, I also remember hearing that our Coptic Church believes in the reconciliation of science and religion when it comes to how we became of nature. This is one of my favorite topics, yet I know so little of what our Church has officially said. I'm sure we have a stance on this topic, no?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).
Comments
have you ever dropped a piece of china on the ground and watched it shatter?
if yes- then try to remember if there was any particular pattern of the shattered china on the floor
if no- then try and try to identify a pattern through the china.
its clear that if you drop a piece of fine china- or any glass item for that matter- and it breaks there will be NO PATTERN on the floor glass will be everywhere in no particular sequence. the evolution thery claims that everything came form a big bang- thats impossible because nothing organised and structured comes from chaos.
the planets are in one straight line- sun comes up moon goes down. there are 4 seasons
if the big bang theory was true wed have everything out of order...
i cant possibly think anyone would believe that EVERYTHING we have (nature) was made outa a bang
God bless,
CS
i also have an important point to make, why are we trying to figure out how God created us? there are many other worthwhile things to think about. im not talkin about anybody in this site, im talkin about scientistis, etc. If we knew how everything is, then we wouldnt be awed by it and magnify God for his kindness and power. u get what i mean? i hope this helps. pray for me
i mean... instead of spending 10000000000 of dollars on trying to figure out how we came about... y cnt we just put that money and invest it into some cure for cancer?
which brings me to another random point...
just like cancer and these theories of evolution have been coming along for several SEVERAL centuries...
maybe God just wants them to be kept a mystery
i mean its good enough that he told us how he created us and everything else... he has no 'obligation' to tell us anything more
right?
"Behold, I will bring it health and healing; I will heal them and reveal to them the abundance of peace and truth. " Jeremiah 33:6
...there are truly something that we just weren't meant to understand yet, and there are some times that we just aren't meant to be in perfect health... and that's all part of God's will that we are just too limited in mind to understand and one day when He chooses... He will explain it all to us and enlighten our eyes to the truth...
Acts 16:6
"Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidded by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia."
Acts 16:7
"After they had come to Mysia, they tried to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit did not permit them."
There are somethings that God keeps from us, for our own good. And all things will be revealed to us in due time. Maybe He just doesn't want us to know yet...i mean sooooooooooooooo many people for centuries have been trying to find out...no one has. So my opinion is that God doesn't really want us to know some things just yet.
Another point might be pondered too-- we are all citizens of our time as well as of our place. That is to say, the people who wrote the Bible stories, while they were presumably inspired by God, were not exactly taking dictation from God. They filtered their understanding of God’s Truth (which we should remember, surpasses all human understanding) through their understanding of the world. This understanding of the world was a product of the time and culture in which they lived, just as our understanding of today’s world is a product of the time and culture in which we live.
My knowledge of history, anthropology and sociology are limited to a few “required” undergraduate courses I took many years ago. So I am only passingly familiar with the prevalent beliefs of people in the ancient world of Old Testament times. And since I have no formal education in theology whatsoever, I don’t know what the “official” position of any church is in RE to evolutionary theory or so-called creationism.
My degrees are in mathematics (I work as a statistician) and science (a master’s and doctorate in the marine sciences, i.e., specifically, oceanography and estuarine ecology). As a trained researcher and credentialed scientist, I have always been disturbed by the assumption many well-meaning “religious” people make about the connection between accepting the scientific evidence of evolution and rejecting belief in God. I have, since my earliest childhood, clearly seen God’s reflection in the natural world. Indeed, it is the awe I feel when looking at individual creatures and at the intricately interrelated system that supports their existence that makes me certain that God is a reality: the Author of this web of life we today call the biosphere. I wonder at my fellow scientists who can look at this marvelous world or the wider cosmos around it and NOT see the Divine Creator-Force reflected there!
Yes, I am a citizen of my time, educated to see and interpret the world around me through the lens of 21st Century science. And I will be the first to tell everyone that neither evolutionary theory nor anything else in 21st Century science in any way denies, diminishes or obscures the presence of God in any corner of His creation. It is only that some individuals, both scientists and others, have blinded themselves to seeing Him there because they have made a conscious, deliberate, and totally scientifically unsupportable decision NOT to accept the possibility that God really "exists," or is accessible to human experience.
And I don’t think He cares a whit whether we think He created the universe directly and definitively or designed it to “evolve” over time. I think He only cares that we choose to see Him and love Him and serve Him, even as scientists, and especially, as stewards (caretakers) of all this glorious natural biosphere He created/evolved!
CS
-Mark
CS-
One of our priests used to tell us that god created the big bang lol- it was sort of a joke because we were young and very confused about the two theories- the one presented by the church, and the one presented by scientists of the world- but now that I think about it could be true.
Grazing bear is right- no one knows how god created the world. Our minds can be seen as two dimensional and the way God works is kind of three dimensional. It’s hard to comprehend the way God works without having the same 3D ability as god!
there are SO MANY THINGS we will go through life not understanding, but we aren’t supposed to ponder on the thought for so long- after all that’s how the big bang theory probably began. An atheist scientist who had nothing better to do sat there and thought and though and thought and came up with a hypothesis which non-religious people simply accepted.
All sorts of religious profanation and heresies are a result of people over analysing what the church believes and asking themselves 'is it really possible?' yet the one thing they don’t realise is how limited humans are and how powerful God is in comparison to humans.
Creation means that God created the world, that doesn't mean we know exactly how. I think you guys also went overboard with you idea of not pursuing science as a result. This is a great gift from God and we should pursue it because the more we know, the more it glorifies Him.
This actually remindes me of the problem of protestantism for instance the idea of salvation by works vs. grace. In trying to defend the truth we can take an unbalanced teaching and from my experinence I've found protestant teaching to be about 90% correct, they actually fall away in terms of the application and implications of the theology but you wouldn't know that and I am personally concerned about the nature of being contrary all the time.
Its not right to assume that because athiests say something its automatically wrong, if evidence says that something has happend, it has probably happened! :)
This cannot contradict the faith, athiests may paint it like it does but we know differently.
God bless,
CS
The real problem is that many people, for reasons that frankly don’t make logical sense to me, have drawn a line in the sand and placed “science” and “religion” on opposite sides, in apparent opposition to each other. Then the assumption is further made that scientists are Godless atheists and so anything “scientific” must promote a world view that denies the existence of God.
Because evolutionary theory has long been favored by the “science” faction, some churches and many religious people gravitate toward the opposite theory, i.e., creationism, not because they understand enough about either theory to make an informed choice of one or the other, but simply because they feel they must resist the propaganda of those atheistic scientists!
All of this seems to me to be rather unfortunate and quite unnecessary. There is nothing intrinsic in science that denies the existence of a “Prime Mover,” “Creator-Force,” or whatever concept you want to associate with what we most commonly simply call “God.” If you then accept that God exists, there is also no reason to deny the possibility that God can and sometimes does act “outside” of natural law-- to allow a Virgin birth, a resurrection, an ascenscion, etc. Since God “invented” the natural world, certainly He can also choose to break its laws or suspend its protocols.
So, science and religion occupy different realms— the natural and the supernatural, which may run together at times, or remain distinctly apart. As a scientist, I can pursue knowledge of the natural world and even come to the conclusion that the evidence points logically to either evolution or creation theory, while at the same time acknowledging that there is a whole other realm in which my worldly knowledge may not apply. I can thus be fully a Christian (with God’s help!) at the same time that I am a practicing scientist. There is no real conflict, no “line in the sand” unless I allow that hypothetical line to be drawn by others in my own mind and heart.
and i don't mean us as Christians, i mean 'us' as in to mankind 8)
Just thought I'd add a little to the discussion. Whether you believe in evolution or not the information in the bible doesn't contradict evolution for a few reasons:
1. The period of a day may not be 24 hours, this was proposed by St. Jerome back in the 5th century so its not like we're back tracking now. I can actually offer a longer winded proof but I'm hoping that this not needed but I find it very ulikley that the period was 24 hours.
2. In the bible the system of creation has produced species in the same order as scientific evidence has imposed on the theory of evolution.
3. In genesis the word used is actually not create but manufacture(another clue that points at evolution).
4. As previously mentioned the idea of mutations is something that has to have occured if we are to believe in the generation of differing races (unless you wanna believe Mark's phototransgens theory). ???
5. We were discussing how man was created seperate to animals but this is not a TRUE representation of the full story of the creation of man as the creation of man is notes in chapter 1 first and you have to take the full account and not just one verse.
Again I stress that I am a fence sitter on this subject so no comments about me be an evolutionist mmmmmkay?
God bless,
CS
But how could that be possible if God created us in His Image??
Defender!
Defender!
God bless,
CS
Defender!
CS
I found a passage on the ROC belief in evolution: I hope this clears up the issue but on a sticky topic like this its best to consult your FOC before commiting to any kind of belief...
God bless,
CS
sometimes when i look at science i find it IMPOSSIBLE to understand why people even believe in evolution.
surely the organisation of the periodic table and all the amazing things you learn in chemistry didnt create themselves. The periodic table, especially, is too perfect to be made by 'coincidence' or 'luck'.
Defender!
sleepy
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1).
- Chris
sleepy
lol