How could people merge evolution and religion(Christianity mainly)???

Question

How could evolution be part of Gods creation(religion)?
Evolution is not in the bible. Adam and Eve were not pre-monkeys. Humans according to the bible were made from dirt. Are they talking about the evolution of Adam and Eve's offspring into multicultural identities or what? In religious evolution theories, did dinosaurs exists? Are only humans evolving or do animals evolve too(Im asking that because religions are human-centric)? Is the Big-Bang theory still used? Did God create us humans first or was it micro-organisms that evolved into animals and than to us? How could people merge evolution with religion. Why do religious people start believing in the evolution theory? Is it because of the adaptation? Im asking this because of a question posted earlier about evolution/religion.

Answer 1

Evolution is not part of Christianity as a religion. It can never be proper dogma in any church legitimately (nor should it ever be).

If you are asking how may it fit....many see the creation narrative as literary emphasis rather than something to be taken as a actual account. (Not all Christians believe the Earth was created in 6 literal days). Evolution of man specifically on the other hand is another subject, and that subject is one that most churches will not consider acceptable (since we are made in the image of God).

Answer 2

That is a LOT of questions!

To start with, the Bible has God saying "Let the waters bring forth", then He says "Let the earth bring forth". It does not say he personally created each individual creature, one at a time. Only man does he seem to have taken a direct hand in creating personally. So... I do not think that rules out evolution in the case of plants and animals.

Dinosaurs? I have known of Christians who denyed any such critters ever actually existed. Most either place them some where in the Creation story, or say they existed long before in a previous creation that was destroyed by a great flood (or war?) between Genesis1:1 and 1:2. Some say the "days" of Creation were eons long, thousands or millions of years, and that dinosaurs were produced on day 5 or 6. And some do not take Genesis literally at all, believing it to be a sort of allegory.

Some Christians, I hear believe in the Big Bang theory, and one translation of the Bible mentions the "dark gaseous mass" in Genesis 1:2.

That is about as far as I can go; the other questions you pose I do not know the answer to. Or at least can't frame one into words just now.

Answer 3

I have a BS and MS in Biology and one project to go to have an MA in Pastoral Ministry from a Catholic seminary. The Catholic church has for more than a half a century accepted that evolution has taken place but cautions scientists that God has had his hand in Human history. Part of the reason for this is the overwhelming scientific evidence. Another reason is Catholics read the Bible a little differently than fundamentalists. We recognize that the Bible is not on book but 73 smaller books put together filled with many kinds of literary forms like, history, prophecy, poetry, fable (yes fable) etc...

There are several philosophical branches that support this. One is the Noological which asks the question how do you get consciousness from inanimate material? Another looks at the incredibly small probability of our universe expanding in such a way for it to exist to support life after the big bang (it basically is 0).
Finally, the start of life has been theorized but never reproduced. Again, the probability of organizing a replicating cell with the proteins and nucleic acids in a comprehensible code is nearly zero. This gives us three points where God has intervened where science has trouble explaining what happened.

I have no trouble with the science or the religion coexisting

Answer 4

All animals are involved in evolution. Evolution says that all creatures started as single cell organisms in water, then they became fish, then they branched out from there. People focus too much on the pre-human apelike stage (not monkeys). A lot of people believe in the Christian God and Jesus but accept that the Bible was written by people and that the details may not be exactly as the Bible says. These things just happened too long ago. The IDEA of the Bible is still there though: that God created everything.

Ever seen "The King and I"?

Answer 5

The Earth and all animals and mankind was created in 6 literal days. Dinosaurs were made on the 6th day along with man. Read the book of JOB. It details an animal that resembles a dinosaur. Evolution is a man-made theory. What everyone fails to tell us is that they have no proof of the big bang nor of evolution. We were supposed to start as a single cell organism and work our way up to a ape then into a man. Has any scientist found one single fossil of any of this evolution? Anyone ever found bones that have half-bread ape/human. The answer is no. Because evolution never happened. People will believe anything as long as its not in the bible.

Answer 6

Why would God tell us that we were created in his image and that it took seven days and then throw around some evidence to the contrary? Hmmm, quite perplexing I agree. There is evidence for the theory of evolution and I can see how it works with animals but honestly the evidence I've seen for the evolution of humans has been fairly unconvincing. A few million year old bone fragments really don't prove anything to me, especially ones that scientists really really wanted to find and wanted to believe in. I'm not a scientist but I took a class on evolution and I found the evidence to be sparse, patched together and frankly somewhat conjured out of thin air. On the other hand, I do believe that God created the earth to take care of itself and if creatures couldn't grow and adapt to their environments then everything might fall apart. I think God is a pretty smart guy, he knew what he was doing. Something else to consider, How long is a day in God's time? I tend to believe that God doesn't work inside man's time, so seven days could be a somewhat arbitrary number that has more significance for us than it does for him.

Answer 7

> "Evolution is not in the bible."

Neither is quantum theory, or relativity, or atoms. Gravity? Nowhere in the Bible. How to fix your Subaru? ... not in the Bible.

You ask *way* too many questions to answer here (try one or two at a time ... you'll get a better response).

But to answer your basic question ... the first thing to do is to avoid the mistake of confusing religion with a literal interpretation of the Bible. Reading Genesis 5 and believing that it is a *literal* list of the actual generations of males from the first human to Noah (who would singlehandedly save and repopulate all the worlds humans and animals) is NOT religion. Considering how the Bible is a guide to living a good life, THAT is religion.

Second is understanding that if you believe in an almighty God, then God can create life and humans any way He wants ... from dirt, or in a big wok ... or through 4 billion years of evolution.

Answer 8

When I was young and being programmed by the adults in my life to believe what they believed I gave these things no thought, I just played along because friction was avoided if this was done. As I aged and began to use knowledge to my own advantage, not in a way to confound my elders, but certain things began to stand out and they could not be ignored. I found that the bible could not stand up to common sense interpretation. The bible was not written by God, it was written by ordinary people who thought they had figured out the mystreries of life but the authors of the bible got it all wrong. In Genesis when God first appeared on the scene the earth was void and darkness was on the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved over the waters. This is beautiful prose and a young mind is moved by such wonder. Where did the water come from? Was it always there, just floating in the void? And when God said, "Let there be light!" Where did the light come from? The light that is present on a overcast day could not be accounted for by those ill informed authors, this allowed them to create the big light later on and in order to explain what kept this lite and the other one and the countless points of lights they invented a firmanent to hold them all in place. When God commanded the earth to appear from the deep, these authors certainly were not referring to the planet Earth, they had no idea that a such a thing existed. People began to listen with more open minds when talk of evolution began to emmerge, they probably began to have doubts about us being created in the image of God, why did God need eyes and a nose, why did he need a mouth, why didhe need anything that a human has?

Answer 9

The two are not compatible, but utilizing "doublethink", some Christians are able to lie to themselves and basically ignore the things that disprove the bible.

In essence, they become non-thinking, moderate Christians, concentrating more on the philosophy than the origins. It's the same concept with the Mormons and the Scientologists.

And hell, it's a step in the right direction.

The religions are dying out. I imagine in a couple generations, Christianity will be replaced with something called Abrahamism or Abrahamic Philosophy, something to that effect. And for the most part, that won't be so bad.

Answer 10

People redefine evolution to just mean change. Then they can believe in both the claims of science and the Bible. You have to redefine what the Bible says or redefine what science says. But evolution- as in inter-species macroevolution is not observable science and has not been well supported by concrete evidence. It's just a theory. So you can be a very good scientist that believes in the literal Bible and in microevolution- small changes.