Can Genesis based creationism and evolutionary science go together?

Question

I say that Genesis 1:25 makes this impossible.

Gen 1:25 And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

Even a slight change is a difference in "kind". Of course, for me this means the Bible is wrong. Does someone see a way of understanding this verse that reconciles it with evolution? And none of this false distinction between so called micro and macro evolution, since these terms are generally not accepted by scientists any more - biologists see this as all one process.

Which part of "the Bible is wrong" was misunderstood? I am agnostic, I'm simply tired of hearing people talk about their God starting evolution.

I still don't have a single response that actually addresses what I asked.

17 posts and noone has addressed my question in the form it was asked.

Answer 1

i don't see where that verse dictates fixity of kinds. it is the same in the evolutionary view: dogs are still dogs, mammals are still mammals, animals are still animals, eukaryotes are still eukaryotes... certainly it doesn't dictate evolution either, but it's vague enough to accomodate either view i think. more problematic are the verses which claim that things happened in a different order than the evolutionary account would have it, but some would counter that they are not temporally ordered lists. but i'm not sure why they still find the bible any use at that point.

Answer 2

an easy answer would be read it in aramaic, dear. "kind' is an english translation that the editors thought was equivalient. I think that you are using the KJV. Try reading the version's preface, the original commentary by the translators. The KJV was altered to make it SOUND good when read aloud, its not supposed to be used for dogmatic or scholarly pursuits.

One should note that the aramaic language didn't have that many words in it. Its not like they had the term species. Take a look at the dietary laws in leviticus, they talk about the 'kinds' of animals unknown to the people of the area. Also take a look at the point of view of the author, he was from the middle east its not like he ever say a teiid lizard (only females in the species) or a mule or a hinny.

One should also remember that the hebrew tradition was an ORAL tradition for centuries, not actually written until well into the 9th century BCE. There were also many popular texts not inculded in the bible collection cuz they didn't fit with the NEW churches ORTHODOXY. Try reading the Book of Adam and Eve or the book of Enoch. Genesis is more like cliff notes.

If a person was to say anything was impossible, it would be creationism. The concept that god created everything in 6days, hehehee earth days. First off, the earth wasn't created unti lthe 3rd day, and our sun not until the 4th day, so logically the genesis preamble is NOT talking about an earth day system. The question then becomes how long is a day to an 'infinite' being?

One clue is in 2 peter 3:8 But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ((an equalily apt translation of 'thousand' here is 'a thousand TIMES a thousand years." Big numbers were kinda tricky in aramaic. Which then we are a least in the general ball park in the evolutinary time line.

The thing to remember that evolution is a science. Science changes when it finds out something new. The road of history is litter with discarded sciences,

Answer 3

No. Creation and Evolution cannot go hand in hand. If one of them happened, than the other cannot have happened.

Creation says that God made all that we have here in LITERALLRY six days. For those who say that it was six "time periods" - how do you reconcile that there were plants on the earth for one "time period" (billions of years) before there were any animals here? They each need the other to survive. One DAY, it could work. Billions of years? I don't think so.

Also, and seperately, Christianity and Evolution cannot be in agreement either. Jesus (a real individual) was sent to Earth by His Father, God as a savior for mankind. A savior needed because of "The Fall". "The Fall" was an actual event, participated in by the first man and the first woman. We know them as Adam and Eve. If there was no Adam, there is no need for a Jesus. Period.

Also, the Bible and Evolution cannot find agreement. Acording to the Bible, death came into the world "by one man's sin" - that one man was Adam, and prior to his sin, there was no death.

About six thousand years ago, God told Adam the truth about things. Satan used a serpent to tell Adam's wife a lie. Like all good lies, it seemed to make sense, and called into question the overall statement made by God. "Did He really say that?" Since then, Satan has had six thousand years to put together more lies that seem to explain things - and still call into question God's statements of fact. And he's still fooling alot of the people alot of the time.

Answer 4

Respectfully, I will try to answer your question .

I totally am not conflicted by science or the bible. They must exist in harmony.

Why not say that God created a single cell living thing and from that developed a 2 cell living thing. Then a 4 cell living thing, then an 8 cell living thing and so on until we have the bounty and beauty of life as we see it today. Time for the eternal is not a consideration. The bible says a day is like 10,000 years to God.

In this sense every thing is made after their kind, on the atomic level. If you delve into quantum physics then you start talking about the plank scale, the basis of all matter. So scientifically every thing is made after its own sub-atomic kind.

It also seems to me that when they re-produce they do so after their kind.

Some try to think of him in human terms and human constraints. We are captives of space and time. He is not. He speaks and it is done. What seems like a long time to us, say the time between the big bang and the present day is nothing to him. He is eternal. It all exist for him in the same moment. It is beyond our comprehension. We can not fathom it. Yet for him all things exist eternal. So he creates a living thing and for us we see the creative process takes millions of years. For him it is the blink of an eye.

Evolution? Yes! Intelligent design? Yes! I don't know how he did it. Why not via evolution? Even if you understand evolution totally, could you do it? Could you create a process like evolution? I am in awe of it. Evolution does not diminish my God at all. It strengthens my love for him.

God and science must co-exist in harmony. God is the way it is, science and religion is us trying to figure out that which is beyond our understanding.

Science has yielded some wonderful advances that have blest us. Why constrain science? Just like religion, it is our attempt to understand our surroundings. Both do not contain who and what he is. He is unfathomable!

Blessings and peace to all,
All in all,
B


I am in awe!

Answer 5

The short answer is no. Creationism is the belief that the earth was made in 6 days that the garden of eden and adam and eve existed, and that these two people populated the earth after eating forbidden fruit from Lucifer in the form of a snake (the fall, the expulsion, etc). None of this story is substantiated by science. Same goes for Noah's ark. Human genetics, the biology of life on earth tell a different story.

Some people do believe in gods and evolution, yet take their holy stories as a metaphor. When it comes to Genesis, there is no way to belief that the universe was made in 6 days. We live in a universe with billions of galaxies -- it takes some stars billions of years for their light to reach Earth because they were so far away. In short, one cannot take Genesis literally to believe in modern cosmology, astronomy, biology, and evolutionary science. But some people find a way to believe in gods and in scientific findings. I am not one of those people, but I thought I'd let you know.

Answer 6

I believe they can.

There is no time line given between Genesis 2 (a rehash of Genesis 1 basically) and Genesis 3, which is the story of the serpent and Eve. There is no information given in the Bible to show how long they were in the garden ... could have been 2 weeks, could have been 5 million years.

After all, they did not know death until after they ate the fruit, remember the story?

Answer 7

If you know what you want people to say, why bother asking?

Perhaps God was setting up for a BBQ and everyone really has read WAY too much into things. Stories often begin with festive events!

Beat a dead horse enough and it's still dead, it just gets flatter and flatter and flatter.

Answer 8

YES!
Literal creation AND our current understandings of astrophysics and evolution can be melded.

The term relativity comes to mind. If you go with the idea that God exists outside of the universe, then He exists outside of our own time/space. This means that He could have literally spent 7, 24 hour, days creating the cosmos and earth while billions of years pasted by in our universe.

Furthermore, random/entropic evolution is mathmatically impossible even using geological timelines of our planet....it just shouldn't have happened this way and so quickly....not without help.

Answer 9

If you look, read and understand into both science and the bible then you will understand that science is playing catch up.

I don't believe in evolution, it's simply in-fathomable, such as Ernst once said about the theory of evolution; "I would rather believe in fairies than such wild speculation." Ernst B. Chain, Nobel Peace Prize Winner (1906 - 1979)

Also I would like to quote James Darwin in The Origin of Species, Chapter 6, "Organs of extreme perfection and complication" -- "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

Answer 10

The word of God and evolution will never go together
it call,s God a liar and deny,s God did anything,if you believe evolution,throw the word of God away.