Exactly what any non-believer would say. Maybe evolution really does lead to athiesm?
To be fair, I don’t think evolution automatically leads to atheism. However, I do think that evolution all by itself without any reference point to God can indeed lead people down the wrong path philosophically speaking-- but only because they don’t really understand the co-operative nature of tandem evolution in my opinion.
They insist that evolution implies a “survival of the fittest” when in reality it implied
nothing of the sort. Evolution, properly understood, at least in my opinion, implies the “the path of least resistance”
more clearly.
In general, Christianity and Judaism regard the Holy Scriptures as the revealed word of God. However, widespread variation on what this revelation means (or to what extent or what books) it applies to can become very confusing.
For example, although Orthodox Jews generally believe that the Torah was given to the Children of Israel at Sinai “Min Hashamayim”, from the heavens – that is, that God actually dictated the words of Torah to Moses atop Mount Sinai – most Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Jews, as well as many Christian scholars, now accept the documentary hypothesis.
From my own perspective, I’ll say that I do believe that the Scriptures are in
some way authored by God. Refining this more clearly in my own Christian perspective, I believe the authors of the Scriptures
wrote as they were superintended by the inspiration of the Spirit of God.
However, when I say that I believe this, I’m not saying that I believe that the individual books of the Scriptures were penned at one time as a whole.
I believe the Scriptures were, for example, subject to expansion and editting by the Holy Spirit as the times and cultures changed around the Hebrew culture which embraced them-- permitted so long as the editting did not contradict the primal revelation.
As another example, I also believe that God allowed a remnant of a primal revelation in man’s distant past to disperse via the Holy Spirit thoughtout the cultures of humanity. This is to say, I believe the naratives of ancient religions carried a distant memory of the primal revelation – albeit, a distant memory distorted over time.
In addition to this, in confirmation with the Scriptures themselves, I believe that, since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
It is in this
revelatory sense that I’ve been wondering how evolution fits into this framework of God’s revelation of himself through creation-- and, to date, all’s that I’ve really received regaridng this question is that evolution effectively tells us nothing about God.
I simply don’t accept this answer and find it somewhat lacking considering all the thought that’s been put into it.
In my own opinion, I think there are different levels of revelation. And although all levels, each with their own corresponding level of responsibility, are inspired by the Holy Spirit, I still nonetheless believe that the Holy Spirit can communicate to us by various mediums and peoples, including other monotheists, polytheists, and atheists.
He most especially, notwithstanding their religious or non-religious background, presents himself to us through the the poor. He indwells us by his Holy Spirit, allegorically speaking, bringing about birthpangs in our soul much like a woman bearing a child. And, manifesting the
primal sacrament of Christ on the cross like a tesseract transfigured thoughout time and space, he is truly present to us in the Eucharist…
