God-believers who believe in Evolution: Paradise "and behold it was very, very good" vs. Death from the getgo?

Question

Sorry for the lack of clarity: I got down to 0 chars when I was typing the question.

Can a 'Person of the Book" who believes in Evolution still believe the traditional explanation for Death and disease in a world God created perfect, with all of the beings in creation living in harmony?

That explanation being: Death and disease poisoned creation when earlist man turned his back on the Creator God.

From the point of view of Evolution, hasn't death and competition for survival ALWAYS been a part of life, from the very beginning?

Thanks Elchisto and SecretSauce---I shall have to read both your answers more carefully in the next few days---

This is in the BIOLOGY section? Here I thought my category-selector was set to the R&S default!

Answer 1

I believe that the seven days of creation was probably billions of years. The bible says each person's life span is like the twinkling if the eye of God. So evolution does nothing to change my biblical beliefs. Actually evolution supports the bible.

http://nazipope-pee.org/sweet.cath-lickmens

With more love in Christ

Imnotacatholic2 but truths are like white clouds within the blueness of God's heavenly sky.

Answer 2

The Catholic Church does not take the stories of creation in the Bible literally. Catholics believe the book of Genesis tells religious truth and not necessarily historical fact.

One of the religious truths is that God created everything and declared all was good.

Catholics can believe in the theory of evolution. Or not. The Church does not require belief in evolution.

The Church supports science in the discovery of God's creation. At this time, the theory of evolution is the most logical scientific explanation. However tomorrow someone may come up with a better idea.

As long as we believe that God started the whole thing, both the Bible and modern science can live in harmony.

With love in Christ.

Answer 3

The truth is God-believers represent a part of the population that has not evolved since the compilation of religion. We might get a new sub-species from them(!).
Science is a product of the evolution of human mind and its ability to construct theory based on perception and proof. And proof is too difficult to handle and understand for those people.

Answer 4

elchistoso absolutely *nailed* this question. Everybody should read his (typically) excellent answer, and thumb it up.

Your question read: "From the point of view of Evolution, hasn't death and competition for survival ALWAYS been a part of life, from the very beginning?"

Yes. From the point of view of evolution, death and competition has always been a part of life. But so has cooperation and symbiosis, nuturing of the young, protection of kin and conspecifics, self-sacrifice, etc. ... these are often very powerful strategies for survival.

But elchistoso's point is key. The Bible is not about the creation of the body, and its disease and death. The body is mundane, shallow, unimportant compared to what faith should *really* be about. Instead, the Bible is a far far deeper, more profound, text about the creation of man's spiritual life and horrors of spirtual death. To read the Bible as a *literal* tale of physical events (where "physical" means related to the body) is to turn it into a silly bed-time story. To read the Bible as *spiritually delivered* tale of spiritual events is to recognize it as a source for really *profound* Truths (with a capital 'T').

(Incidentally, this is also pretty close to the position on evolution held by the Catholic church, whose members include roughly half of all the Christians on the planet. Catholicism has no problem with evolution, as long as God is still given glory for its results ... and scientists have no problem with religious people giving glory for whatever reason, as long as the faithful don't try to rewrite science to suit a literal interpretation of the Bible.)

But ... oh yes, we're in the Biology section. So in this case, I have to reiterate that evolution requires both life and death, and both competition and cooperation, both disease and exquisite function.

---

And chas_chas is hopelessly wrong. First, he completely misses elchistoso's point. If you recognize that the entire *point* of the Bible is to address spiritual issues and events, not physical ones, then the story of the fall is about spiritual death not physical death. This point went right over chas_chas's head.

Second, he missed my point (or didn't read it). Evolution is NOT the "mortal enemy of Christianity." As I pointed out, roughly half of the world's Christians (1.1 billion Catholics out of 2 billion Christians) belong to a church that has officially concluded that evolution is NOT incompatible with the teachings of Christ. As a Catholic I am fed up with the arrogance of people like chas_chas who claim to speak for all of Christianity!

Chas_chas even extends this arrogance to declare what "any well-informed athiest" knows. (Why do so-called "Christians" LOVE to give that Bozarth quote ... and agree with it?) Here's a hint: Bozarth doesn't speak for all athiests, much less all "evolutionists" (who, contrary to your pigeonholing, are NOT all athiests). I am one hard-core "evolutionist" who is not an athiest, and also thinks that quote by Bozarth (which you apparently agree with) shows an utterly WRONG understanding of Christianity ... and evolution.

Answer 5

As a christian who also believes in evolution (Yes, christians CAN believe in both, despite what some morons have stated here), the key is whether Genesis is literal or allegory.

Here, I believe that the "death" that is introduced to the world by Adam and Eve's sin was spiritual death, not physical death.

Genesis is very similar to the polytheistic creation story of other pagan religions in the region at the time. Genesis is meant to explain who created the world, and why. Not how. Genesis was intended to show the world that ONE Creator God made everything. There is no need for seperate gods for the land, sky, wind, rain, snow, oceans, etc. One God made them all. That is the reason for Genesis, and to treat it as a scientifically accurate treatice on biology, gelolgy, and cosmology more like worshipping the bible instead of worshipping God. Bibliolatry is an appropriate name for it.

As for physical death, I don't believe that any animal ever lived (physically) forever before sin, and that goes for humans too. Animals don't sin, because they live by their instincts. Those instincts are neither right or wrong. They just are. When a male lion takes over a pride, he will immediately kill all cubs sired by the ousted male to bring the females back into estrus. No lion sits around later feeling guilty about it. And certainly, lions don't actually sit back and consider that they must kill off all of the cubs to bring the lionesses into heat. They just do it. It is neither evil nor good.

It's instinct.

We came from non-human hominids. And those came from non-hominid primates. Certainly, these ancestors also abided by their natural insticts, right up to the point that Homo Sapiens sapiens evolved. But then, God took two of them and infused them with a soul. They became self-aware. Later, they became aware of sin, right and wrong, good and evil. The fruit of the tree could either be an allegory of a hard fact. It doesn't matter. It happened.

The rest is pre-history...

SECRETSAUCE, Thank you for the kind words.

CHAS_CHAS, plenty of christians and christian clergy strongly disagree with your intolerant, thoughtless, accusatory position. Visit the following links if you truly have the intellectual honesty to see how WRONG you are.
You act like this is my first rodeo with people like you.
http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/religion_science_collaboration.htm
http://cesc.montreat.edu/ceo/ASA/
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/5025_statements_from_religious_orga_12_19_2002.asp
http://talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/jan04.html
http://talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/dec05.html
Allow me to quote a few very applicable paragraphs from this last one...
"one of the largest questions challenging the reality of your Faith is how you can remain so decidedly smug in your ignorance and call it knowledge. That is a direct violation of the principles of faith found in the Holy Scriptures, yet you ignore those principles daily in your crusade against Evolution."
"And might not God, from Whom are all things, have been able to write the laws of chemistry in such a way as to guarantee that "life" would emerge? Is not God omnipotent? If He is, then He would have that ability to create such laws."
"There is no difficulty between faith in God and the Theory of Evolution, or between faith in God and abiogenesis for that matter."

As for chas' quote of Bozarth, this guy must be a hugely popular and influential evolutionist (please note the SARCASM), considering that I can't find ANY information on him from several different searches I've done, in different ways, on Google and Yahoo, and that this text was written back in the 70's. The only thing that pops up from these searches was the same quote, posted on several different creationist websites. I also tried Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia, both on my computer and the online version.
NOTHING.
Hmmm. I guess Mr. Bozarth wasn't speaking for all of academia when he wrote that.

It doesn't matter. It is just another example of dishonest creationist quote mining.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/project.html

Pious fraud is STILL fraud.

ImaCatholic2, I completely agree with you. Be it evolution or literal creation as described by Genesis, I give credit to God for the act of humans becoming human. So what does it really matter? It's a bit like arguing whether there was ever really a little boy who cried wolf. Does the lesson get lost if the stroy isn't 100% accurate. Really! Imagine! People arguing over whether there really was such a boy, and if he really cried wolf, and if his kinfolk really believed him or not. Does it matter? Or is the lesson the real story?

Answer 6

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Answer 7

Elchisto is completely inconsistent.
The Bible conpletely contrdicts evolution.
It clearly teaches that physical death is the result of the fall.
(From dust you were made, to dust you will return)
If there was death before the fall then there was no need for Jesus to die to pay the penalty for our sin.

Evolution is the mortal enemy of Christianity, as any well-informed atheist knows.

‘Christianity has fought, still fights, and will continue to fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the Son of God. If Jesus was not the redeemer who died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.’

G. Richard Bozarth, ‘The Meaning of Evolution’, American Atheist

Answer 8

Can you make a flower, make it grow, cause the right conditions for it's growth and survival? No. God created Earth and mankind to His satisfaction. No miraculous explosion can do that since Who created the ability or molecules in the first place? God may have created us to evolve and perhaps other animals, but monkeys are monkeys and people are people as it was in the beginning. He in DIVINITY created us that way for his joy and purpose (and for ours)

Answer 9

Christians don't believe in evolution. They believe they have a creator ( God, Christ his son, and The holy spirit Christ arisen.) -Vs- You live and you die. Which sounds better? >>> Glad to be a Christian.

Answer 10

your question doesnt make a lot of sense.