For christians who also believe in evolution....?

Question

Genesis - " 24And God said, "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth after his kind"; and it was so."

Just curious as I don't think evolution and christianity are compatible.....It's a pretty good bet that there were no domesticated cattle when the earth was created, especially considering no one was around yet to domesticate them, so did your god make them or did they evolve over millions of years? If god didn't ouright create cows in the beginning, which didn't happen, is the bible wrong? How do you reconcile this?

So many excuses.....it never ceases to amaze me

Answer 1

I reconcile this by cooking a big juicy domesticated hamburger.

Answer 2

You are right that Evolution & Biblical Christianity are not compatible. The short answer is that God created a "kind" that was full of all the genetic information needed for the diversity we see in the bovine kind (or any other kind) today. Over time, through natural selection (now that is compatible with Christianity), some 'branches' of a kind lost some of the genetic information to adapt better to their environment. Depending on the environment, etc. different groups of the same kind lost different information. That is why some species can still reproduce with different species of the same kind--e.g. Tigers & Lions, Zebras & Horses, etc. Go to the www.answersingenesis.org website >Get Answers>Get Answers>Genetics or Information Theory. Those two pages should be very helpful to you.

The reason that you are confused is that you were probably taught that natural selection is a mechanism of Evolution. The truth is that Evolution requires the addition of information--there is no known mechanism that works like this. Natural selection on the other hand is about the LOSS of information. They are not at all the same thing. If Evolutionists did find a mechanism that added information, they would actually have a real theory, but after all these years of research they still can't come up with one. They still rely on a twisted & dishonest use of natural selection & mutations.

Hope this helps.

Answer 3

Humm, you're asking about the compatibility betwenn Genesis and evolution...

1)Evolution has an imense amount of evidence to back it up, each day the evidence gets more and more solid, and there is nothing to refute it, so its certain today that evolution is ongoing process, not only this, it is also the basis for modern biology

2)The Genesis tell us nothing about evolution, still as a Christian I personally believe that the Bible is tha absolute truth.

3)How to reconcile? Is it just a bad excuse to interpret the First chapters of the Genesis as an allegory rather than an accurate atempt to explain the origins of earth and life?

Well, before evolution came along many, many theologist did't think so, they interpreted the Genesis as clarly alegoric and metaphoric, it explain about the relations betwen man and God, it is not a Biology or geology class.

So, as far as i'm concerned it is not an excuse (you might not like it, many christians don't), still there is not conflit in reconciling Evolution and Christianity.

And there is no conflit between science and faith, they simply deal with different subjects (whch is pretty much all I keep saying here on R&S)

Answer 4

First, I don't see where it says Domestic cattle in the verse. It just says cattle - which, by the by are still out there in their non-domesticated form. Much as non domestic dogs still exist, dingos, wolves, etc.

Second, there was an experiment in Russia with Blue foxes - prized for their fur. Some people decided to try to domesticate them instead of having to trap them and they figured it would take generations to get a domestic crop. It actually took 25 years. and in fact, the domestication was so complete that the foxes retained juvenile spots on their coats.

Third. You are assuming Christians who believe in evolution accept the 4000 year time line. God said He created the world in Seven days. What's a day to God? 24 hours, a million years? Don't you think a God who would give us intellect and free will would also give us explanitions for things?

Answer 5

Its easy. I don't much of the Old Testament literally, least of all Genesis.

In the New Testament, Christ taught in symbols and in parables. What would lead me to think that God would teach us any differently, since Jesus is God in human flesh? The basic idea that we're meant to walk away from Genesis with is that God created everything -- including people -- and that obedience to him is good and disobedience is bad. Obviously, the simplicity of the tale is intended towards the audience of the time. You also have to remember that The Bible has been translated OVER and OVER ... and the author was probably writing about what he could see at the time. He had no idea that cattle hadn't been around forever.

There are many, many stories in the Old Testament that are obviously parables when you compare them side by side to the parables of Christ. I think that Fundamentalism restricts The Bible and takes away from some of the deeper meaning of the stories.

Obviously, I can evolution is true. I also know that God is in charge. So it doesn't seem like that much of a jump to believe that God orchestrated evolution.

Wow, JP -- we think alike.

Answer 6

God DID bring them forth as it says in the bible, but the phrase "bring them forth" means a slow, evolution.

I don't believe the bible should or was meant to be taken literally as a historical document. It is the inspired word of God, meant to explain and to inspire others. How do you reconcile that there are two creation stories in the Bible. Which one do you believe or do you believe it is a combination of the two or is the second one a mistake or it cannot be taken as literally as the first?

To decide that God couldn't or wouldn't allow nature to evolve slowly over time is trying to take God and fit him into your idea of who he is not believe that he exists apart from what you may think of him as being. I think it's a bit presumptuous at best, but I'm sure there's some technical religious term for it.

Answer 7

OK lets look at this. It says let the earth bring forth living creature after his kind....but he didn't say how exactly this was to happen. I am readying this and it doesn't say it was instant. And isn't this in the Old Testament? Didn't Jesus basically discard the OT? That it was false teachings?
Why are you all SO convinced that evolution is bad? OK lets say a story in the bible isn't supposed to be literal. And God is trying to let you know. What does he have to do? Hit you over the head with a baseball bat?? What on earth does evolution have to do with believing Jesus was your savior anyhow? How can you all get so distracted by a BOOK instead of focusing on your faith?? And you wonder WHY people get so frustrated with you?

Answer 8

"If god didn't outright create cows in the beginning, which didn't happen, is the bible wrong? How do you reconcile this?"

The question isn't "if" but "how" God created cows. He could have used evolution -- this seems very viable to me.

As far as the bible reconciliation. God was explaining creation to Moses who in turn gave it to the Israelites. They lived in tents, had no notion of gravity (except they new things fell), DNA, fission / fusion, etc. It was a very well done simple explanation meant for all to consume not just biologists, etc.

as far as the 6 day thing goes again it is Hard to explain eternity to temporal creatures -- and it had a nifty explanation for a Sabbath day (win, win).

Answer 9

because contrary to popular belief, the bible is not 100% historical fact.

personally, i think of Genesis as a primitive peoples' guess on how the world came about. for those of you who are in an uproar over this, would you like to believe humans started out as inbreds? Adam and Eve have kids,...who do the kids have kids with? Brother and sister dearest, thats who. But we didnt come from a magical garden and cows didnt pop up out of the earth for people to cultivate.

essentially, yes, the bible is wrong in this case, but that doesnt mean the whole document is useless. take the readings and scriptures and such with an open mind and see the message behind them and dont take it literally.

ive actually heard some uber-creationists claim that fossils were planted by the devil to make us think that the bible was wrong...its kind of sad, really

Answer 10

I see no contradiction in what you quoted. He did bring them forth. Just not the way you think. What does "brought forth" mean in biblical terms? It does not mean "sprang straight out of the dirt" It means "being born"

The word "evolution" is the opposite of "revolution", which is used to denote radical change. "Evolution" then, denotes the opposite of radical change. It denotes a change that takes place over time. Considering the finite nature of human life spans, it is more probable that domesticating cattle came WAY before the idea of written words.

Did you know that our solar system used to be a binary system? (ie, two stars) Which can be astronomically and mathematically proven, and which goes with that part in the bible where there is no night, until He divided day from night. For a long time, the days on Earth were never ending.

Answer 11

Do you believe there was literally a good samaritan and a guy who got beat up and ignored by two guys before the samaritan?

Or did Jesus speak in a parable?


Why can't Genesis be a parable?

Ancient semetic cultures were OBSESSED with origins. You wouldn't just introduce yourself with your name, you'd give your parents names, your grand parent's name, and even further back if you knew it.

So Moses goes to God and says, "God... where'd we come from?"

God responds, "Well, first I had to build up the inflaton field, which was oscillating in vast patterns of quantum interference. I designed it so that occasionally the indeterminancy of the fluctuations would exceed a certain critical value and the underlying vacuum would phase-change to a lower vacuum energy. This caused the spacetime metric to rapidly expand, precipitating subatomic particulate and..."

Moses would have been utterly clueless. Moses didn't know or understand quantum physics to understand the Big Bang, let alone genetics to understand Evolution.

So God says instead, "You know Moses, you're obsessed with where you came from. You came from me. I did this, then I did that, then I finished up with you guys. To tell you the truth Moses, you couldn't understand it, so just live with this -- *I* did it. Just know that in a few thousand years, you guys are gonna be pretty smart and start to see just how truly awesome and complex this universe I made is!"


If Jesus used parables, and Jesus is God, ... why couldn't God use a parable to teach a truth (God Created) that could not in its literal form (Big Bang/evolution) be understood by the culture of the day?