Reconciling Evolution with Adam and Eve

[richardwy]

How do you do that?

No doubt what Genesis says. No disagreement there.

The line goes something like, “Well it can’t be. That couldn’t happen because humans have measured time and it’s not so.”

My response is “did you measure right?” And, “are you sure what you used to measure holds up or is right?”

Now. The worst that transpires is someone or people think I’m a nut because because I believe what’s recorded in Genesis is what truly transpired.

Actually, I don’t think anyone seeks to sick the guys with the white coats upon me. I don’t go about saying at the drop of a hat, “by the way, Genisis is so.”

When the assumptions come out 1st – rather than last – we’re left with 2 choices:

God created the world in 6 solar days because Genesis is so.

Or,

God did not create the world in 6 solar days because we say it isn’t so.

Measuring rests on the assumption that stuff has always been the same.

Immediately, I might be asked what proof I have that stuff has changed to support skepticism that the measuring stuff may not have been always as it is today.

I have no proof. None. Not a shred.

Same place as the measurers if the terms be reversed.

Now, the next step might entail, “well, you could take that and blah, blah, blah, blah.” Now pigs have wings.

I don’t take the next step.

We’re talking Genesis. I believe what it says.

 

[drpmjhess]

The poem is simply breathtaking…It will appear on my blog in a day or two…It needs to be seen. It nearly made me weep, its just so sweet and loving.

Wildflower, I appear to have distressed you. I am sorry. I too am distressed. It has been such a shock to find fundamentalist Catholics. I would have thought it an oxymoron. My heart mourns the fact that if we ourselves are so basically at odds over things I would consider fairly simple and also fairly unimportant, there is little hope for Christendom of reconcilliation and even less for ecumenism as regards other faiths.
.

Thanks, SpiritMeadow. Alice Meynell has been an inspiration to millions as the twentieth century has absorbed the giants shifts of evolutionary biology, quantum mechanics, and relativistic physics. If you want something mind-blowing with respect to the latter, I recommend Timothy Ferris’ “The Whole Shebang.” (I use this book in one of my graduate seminars). Ferris has a rather lame theological postcript (embarrassingly naive), and he is a journalist rather than a scientist. However, his grasp of modern cosmology is immense and his presentation of it very lucid.

I recently had a nice conversation with Fr. Michael Dodds, a colleague who is a Dominican priest and philosophical theologian. He has written and spoken on evolution an the Bible, and has been attacked by fundies like I was last Thursday. Our conversation centered around the concept of panentheism, and Michale pointed out that in one sense Thomas Aquinas reflected panentheist concerns – the immanace of God. Basically, Christians since Pentecost have had to grapple with the question of how God can be both transcendent “above” and immanent within the Church and Creation. St. Augustine allowed for the possibility that God allows creation to unfold from seeds (rather than creating everything at once). It would be a mistake, of course (which some have made) to read Darwinian evolutionary ideas into Aquinas or Augustine. Nevertheless, the philosophical problem of how God allows nature its integrity and autonomy on the one hand, and how God relates to that creation on the other, is a perennial one,and panentheism offers one useful perspective.

Prayerfully yours,
Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

Nope. You infer that. Let God make the sun stand still, and you see it, and you tell me how you’re going to record that in your diary. No one on planet earth would say anything but “the sun stood still.”"

OK, Richard, you take Joshua 10:12-13 symbolically, and I’ll take Genesis 1-11 symbolically!
Petrus

 

[buffalo]

Snakes have neither the requisite vocal chords, nor the tongue and jaw muscles necessary to form words.

.

You should know the correct rendering is serpent.

Naturally a snake does not have this ability. Supernaturally?

Now serpents on the other hand can naturally utter sounds. Supernaturally?

 

[buffalo]

Sounds like an interesting Twilight Zone episode, or a Bishop Berkeleyan fantasy. God created a world with the appearance of age?

There are 100 billion galaxies out there, averaging 100 billion stars each. To intelligent inhabitants of those stars that have habitable planets, would the universe – including our solar system – have only the appearnce of age?

The appearance of age is assumed by the belief of a linear timeline. God could have compressed time and a lot could have happened in a short period. \

Think of a map of the globe. As we unfold it the regions away from the equator are distorted.

Can we prove that time is linear and always was?

What are the implications of light speed slowing.

I will wait and see.

 

[drpmjhess]

The appearance of age is assumed by the belief of a linear timeline. God could have compressed time and a lot could have happened in a short period.

That’s also known as Omphalism, or “Last Thursdayism”: God could have created everything last Thursday, with the appearance of age, with our intact memories of events and a timeline that never actually happened. In fact, everything right now could be a figment of the divine imagination, or a projection.

But if it is reasonable for us to assume that we have in fact lived our lives, rather than having been created last Thursday complete with memories of lives not actually experienced, it is also reasonable to assume that the US is two centuries old, that the Grand Canyon is tens of millions of years old, and that the universe is 3.7 billion years old. I’ll go with the reasonable assumption, rather than the Omphalist one.
Prayerfully yours
Petrus

 

[buffalo]

That’s also known as Omphalism, or “Last Thursdayism”: God could have created everything last Thursday, with the appearance of age, with our intact memories of events and a timeline that never actually happened. In fact, everything right now could be a figment of the divine imagination, or a projection.

But if it is reasonable for us to assume that we have in fact lived our lives, rather than having been created last Thursday complete with memories of lives not actually experienced, it is also reasonable to assume that the US is two centuries old, that the Grand Canyon is tens of millions of years old, and that the universe is 3.7 billion years old. I’ll go with the reasonable assumption, rather than the Omphalist one.
Prayerfully yours
Petrus

You are free to do so.

 

[buffalo]

That’s also known as Omphalism, or “Last Thursdayism”: God could have created everything last Thursday, with the appearance of age, with our intact memories of events and a timeline that never actually happened. In fact, everything right now could be a figment of the divine imagination, or a projection.

But if it is reasonable for us to assume that we have in fact lived our lives, rather than having been created last Thursday complete with memories of lives not actually experienced, it is also reasonable to assume that the US is two centuries old, that the Grand Canyon is tens of millions of years old, and that the universe is 3.7 billion years old. I’ll go with the reasonable assumption, rather than the Omphalist one.
Prayerfully yours
Petrus

Now remember, we would say that billions of years would equal rotations around the sun.

In compressed time we would still see the number of orbits. We cannot know the actual time it took.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

No doubt what Genesis says. No disagreement there.

The line goes something like, “Well it can’t be. That couldn’t happen because humans have measured time and it’s not so.”

My response is “did you measure right?” And, “are you sure what you used to measure holds up or is right?”

Now. The worst that transpires is someone or people think I’m a nut because because I believe what’s recorded in Genesis is what truly transpired.

Actually, I don’t think anyone seeks to sick the guys with the white coats upon me. I don’t go about saying at the drop of a hat, “by the way, Genisis is so.”

When the assumptions come out 1st – rather than last – we’re left with 2 choices:

God created the world in 6 solar days because Genesis is so.

Or,

God did not create the world in 6 solar days because we say it isn’t so.

Measuring rests on the assumption that stuff has always been the same.

Immediately, I might be asked what proof I have that stuff has changed to support skepticism that the measuring stuff may not have been always as it is today.

I have no proof. None. Not a shred.

Same place as the measurers if the terms be reversed.

Now, the next step might entail, “well, you could take that and blah, blah, blah, blah.” Now pigs have wings.

I don’t take the next step.

We’re talking Genesis. I believe what it says.

You quoted a line I said from what? I have no reference for your statements, and frankly and sadly have not a clue what you are talking about. Sorry you have to spend all that time typing.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Thanks, SpiritMeadow. Alice Meynell has been an inspiration to millions as the twentieth century has absorbed the giants shifts of evolutionary biology, quantum mechanics, and relativistic physics. If you want something mind-blowing with respect to the latter, I recommend Timothy Ferris’ “The Whole Shebang.” (I use this book in one of my graduate seminars). Ferris has a rather lame theological postcript (embarrassingly naive), and he is a journalist rather than a scientist. However, his grasp of modern cosmology is immense and his presentation of it very lucid.

I recently had a nice conversation with Fr. Michael Dodds, a colleague who is a Dominican priest and philosophical theologian. He has written and spoken on evolution an the Bible, and has been attacked by fundies like I was last Thursday. Our conversation centered around the concept of panentheism, and Michale pointed out that in one sense Thomas Aquinas reflected panentheist concerns – the immanace of God. Basically, Christians since Pentecost have had to grapple with the question of how God can be both transcendent “above” and immanent within the Church and Creation. St. Augustine allowed for the possibility that God allows creation to unfold from seeds (rather than creating everything at once). It would be a mistake, of course (which some have made) to read Darwinian evolutionary ideas into Aquinas or Augustine. Nevertheless, the philosophical problem of how God allows nature its integrity and autonomy on the one hand, and how God relates to that creation on the other, is a perennial one,and panentheism offers one useful perspective.

Prayerfully yours,
Petrus

You have nailed my interest directly…

the philosophical problem of how God allows nature its integrity and autonomy on the one hand, and how God relates to that creation on the other, is a perennial one,and panentheism offers one useful perspective

This is the context in which I labor. If you have suggestions as to which theologians I should start with, and the order? 2 or 3 should get me started fine…lol…

 

[drpmjhess]

Here’s a suggestion. God created everything yesterday, with the appearance of great age. Fossils buried in rocks to trick us, glaciers as if they had been there for tens of thousands of years, light simulating galaxies billions of light years distant. God created us all yesterday, with people in the process of dying, planes crashing, scriptures as if they had been compiled over centuries, humans with memories of live never actually lived. That’s Omphalism in action.

 

[drpmjhess]

humans with memories of live never actually lived. That’s Omphalism in action.

Correction: “humans with memories of life never actually lived.”

It could be that we have a choice between: (1) a biblical literalist 10,000 year universe created in six days + an historical global flood, or (2) a non-literalist ancient and evolving worldview as accepted by 99.9% of the worlds working scientists and the vast majority of trained theologians and clergy.

That would be a choice.

 

[drpmjhess]

This is the context in which I labor. If you have suggestions as to which theologians I should start with, and the order? 2 or 3 should get me started fine…lol…

SpiritMeadow, out of the booklist I posted last week, here are my top six picks:

Edwards, Denis. The God of Evolution: A Trinitarian Theology. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999.
Haught, John F. Deeper than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2003.
Hewlett, Martinez, and Ted Peters. Can you believe in God and evolution? A Guide for the Perplexed. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006.
Miller, Kenneth R. Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1999.
Peacocke, Arthur. All that is: a Naturalistic Faith for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Philip Clayton. Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 2007.
Peters, Ted, and Martinez Hewlett, Evolution from Creation to New Creation. Nashville: Abingdon, 2003.

Petrus

 

[StMarkEofE]

You can believe in Genesis literally and still accept the claims of science. There are a number of ways, but here’s the simplest one:

When God made the Earth in 3967BC, he made it such that it appears to be billions of years old, and that people appear to have descended from single-celled microorganisms.

I don’t particularly like it put that way, but there are other ways to basically say the same thing which solve the problem.

I love Genesis,

God created Man in His own Image. God created the heavens and earth and commanded that the earth bring forth the creatures in the sea, land and air. God created the conditions for these things to happen but with man God made the exception by creating (forming) him from dust. A very special dust the finest grains of soil not clay. Do you notice the difference in the way God commands or lets and when God creates?

 

[SpiritMeadow]

SpiritMeadow, out of the booklist I posted last week, here are my top six picks:

Edwards, Denis. The God of Evolution: A Trinitarian Theology. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1999.
Haught, John F. Deeper than Darwin: The Prospect for Religion in the Age of Evolution. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2003.
Hewlett, Martinez, and Ted Peters. Can you believe in God and evolution? A Guide for the Perplexed. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006.
Miller, Kenneth R. Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground between God and Evolution. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1999.
Peacocke, Arthur. All that is: a Naturalistic Faith for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Philip Clayton. Minneapolis : Fortress Press, 2007.
Peters, Ted, and Martinez Hewlett, Evolution from Creation to New Creation. Nashville: Abingdon, 2003.

Petrus

Thanks Petrus, and thanks for the full list you sent before. I was thinking of general theology…Although I’m familiar with Haught i believe…perhaps just a article I read.

 

[edwest2]

No doubt what Genesis says. No disagreement there.

The line goes something like, “Well it can’t be. That couldn’t happen because humans have measured time and it’s not so.”

My response is “did you measure right?” And, “are you sure what you used to measure holds up or is right?”

Now. The worst that transpires is someone or people think I’m a nut because because I believe what’s recorded in Genesis is what truly transpired.

Actually, I don’t think anyone seeks to sick the guys with the white coats upon me. I don’t go about saying at the drop of a hat, “by the way, Genisis is so.”

When the assumptions come out 1st – rather than last – we’re left with 2 choices:

God created the world in 6 solar days because Genesis is so.

Or,

God did not create the world in 6 solar days because we say it isn’t so.

Measuring rests on the assumption that stuff has always been the same.

Immediately, I might be asked what proof I have that stuff has changed to support skepticism that the measuring stuff may not have been always as it is today.

I have no proof. None. Not a shred.

Same place as the measurers if the terms be reversed.

Now, the next step might entail, “well, you could take that and blah, blah, blah, blah.” Now pigs have wings.

I don’t take the next step.

We’re talking Genesis. I believe what it says.

Keep to the following Church teachings, located here:

catholic.com/library/adam_eve_and_evolution.asp

"It is impossible to dismiss the events of Genesis 1 as a mere legend. They are accounts of real history, even if they are told in a style of historical writing that Westerners do not typically use.

“It is equally impermissable to dismiss the story of Adam and Eve and the fall (Gen, 2-3) as a fiction.”

At the bottom of this web page is the following:

“NIHIL OBSTAT: I have concluded that the materials presented in this work are free of doctrinal or moral errors. Bernadeane Carr, STL, Censor Librorum, August 10, 2004.”

This is what I believe.

God bless,
Ed

 

[Benadam]

I love Genesis,

God created Man in His own Image. God created the heavens and earth and commanded that the earth bring forth the creatures in the sea, land and air. God created the conditions for these things to happen but with man God made the exception by creating (forming) him from dust. A very special dust the finest grains of soil not clay. Do you notice the difference in the way God commands or lets and when God creates?

Yes, and I especially like your reference to the word dust and some of the implications in regards of this discussion when referenced with the other biblical meanings given to it from the mouth of God in Sacred Scriptures.

From the Douay-Rheims bible:

Genesis 13

16 And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: if any man be able to number the dust of the earth, he shall be able to number thy seed also.

Genesis 28

14 And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth: thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and IN THEE and thy seed all the tribes of the earth SHALL BE BLESSED.

Genesis 3

19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return to the earth, out of which thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and into dust thou shalt return.

Exodus 8

16 And the Lord said to Moses: Say to Aaron, Stretch forth thy rod, and strike the dust *of *the earth: and may there be sciniphs in all the land of Egypt.

Exodus 9

9 And be there dust upon all the land of Egypt: for there shall be boils and swelling blains both in men and beasts in the whole land of Egypt.

 

[Benadam]

Correction: “humans with memories of life never actually lived.”

It could be that we have a choice between: (1) a biblical literalist 10,000 year universe created in six days + an historical global flood, or (2) a non-literalist ancient and evolving worldview as accepted by 99.9% of the worlds working scientists and the vast majority of trained theologians and clergy.

That would be a choice.

a person I dialogued with here a couple of years ago calculated the number of weeks from creation to the first drop of rain of the flood. The number of weeks worked out to be the same number as there are seconds in a day. He felt that the author did that to protect the text. I argued if the numerical relationship were valid it was meant to reveal truth not protect the text.

 

[Benadam]

In reference to the number of weeks from creation to flood. Here is a thread that he posted it in although not the one I discussed it with him, post #39 details the calculation in case anyone is interested.

Vatican observatory - Catholic Answers Forums

 

[richardwy]

You quoted a line I said from what? I have no reference for your statements, and frankly and sadly have not a clue what you are talking about. Sorry you have to spend all that time typing.

Your post #148.