how can a christan believe in the principal of evolution?

Question

If God created the heavens and the earth then how can a christan, who believes in the bible, also believe in evolution?

Answer 1

For starters, Christians didn't even universally accept the book of Genesis as Scripture until well into the early 4th century. The earliest lists of Christian Scriptures don't include Genesis.

Even when Christians accepted the book of Genesis, the first mention of it understood the text as an allegory, not literal history. Origen was one of the first Christians to comment on the subject, and he rejected any notion of a 'young earth' creation.

As for the Genesis account, it is clearly an allegory for the human condition. "Adam" isn't even a name - it means "human being" or "humanity." And "Eve" simply means "universal mother." That, by the way, is one of the reasons why you never see people in the Bible named "Adam" or "Eve." This was still the meaning of the word in Medieval Judaism. They interpreted "Adam" to be the primordial Man.

Human origins were never a dogma in the ancient Church. They ruled on what kinds of food to eat on what days, argued over how many fingers to use when making the sign of the cross, and almost divided the Church over which weekday to use to celebrate Easter. But none of them ever issued any kind of dogmatic statement on the seven-day creation account.

Answer 2

A strict reading of the bible's account is definitely not consistent with the evidence, or the scientific community's best model so far: evolution by natural selection.

Anyone can probably force an allegorical and metaphorical reading of the bible, and as a poetic sort of understanding of life and the origins for "stuff", that may be useful-- or not.

btw, "believing" in evolution is not something skeptics do. We *accept* the evolution model because it is the best model to interpret the evidence and facts. As evidence accumulates, if it did not support the theory, then a different theory would be required. But in the case of evolution, the evidence continues to mount in favor of it. The theory becomes more robust with time. That leads us to correctly interpret the evolutionary theory as true, but even this truth is provisional. All "truth" is provisional in this way.

The main difference with a biblical interpretation is that it does not admit doubt. Science does admit doubt, and because of this science is a much better way to understand the world and ourselves.

Answer 3

Genesis was written to satisfy man's questions at the time. It was never meant to be a scientific, all encompassing answer. God knew that eventually we would start questioning, and searching for answers. During the time that Genesis was written, man could not have understood the specifics of the evolutionary process and exactly how we, and the universe, came into being. So he gave us the brains to learn these things ourselves, as mankind in general advances and gains more knowledge.

Also, we have to remember that the true nature of God is revealed to us through Jesus Christ. Jesus taught in parables, so it only makes sense to assume that the Word of God might come to us, sometimes, in the form of parables as well. Take for example the parable of the Prodigal Son. Its not important whether or not there was an actual son who left, lived it up, and then returned home. What is important is the lesson that we learn from the story. The same is true of the story of creation, as well.

In the end, the fact that evolution is true doesn't change anything.

Answer 4

It does look as if animals have genetic code, which does vary, and that genetic code determines some aspects of body and so-on. So that better code leads to living longer and producing more offspring.

This of course is only the default mechanism as I see it. God could intervene at any time to say enhance ape DNA to make it human, and no scientist will ever know, since that event would have happened long ago, outside lab conditions.

The evolution of Richard Dawkins is bent over towards an atheistic implication, and oversimplifies things. He thinks that all biological change is due to random changes and mating, and then superior genes. That is a logic error. All biological change could be due to random changes, but not necessarily. And we christians know God is real from other ways, so He could used evolution to produce Man biologically, or He could have made some changes directly Himself, without it being possible to know if He had.

Answer 5

If they make the jump to believe that the creation story is a parable and not to be considered accurate word for word.

God could have created it through the evolution process. I.E. God is evolution. God creates through the process of evolution and the other principles of science.

Answer 6

Ah, yes, the principal of evolution. A theory based on the fact that Apes are similar to humans. Must be a connection, no doubt. Not.

But how a Christian can believe it, I don't know.

A Creator is the only logical answer.

Answer 7

My mother belives that God guided evolution - using it as a way to test ideas and selecting what worked best as a good artist does. She doesn't believe that the bible is correct word for word as it was written by man and has been translated and rewritten by men many, many times over the centuries.

Answer 8

Because evolution and the Bible are not in direct conflict (depending on how you interpret it). The whole story of Genesis could have been allegorical. Taking a literal approach isn't the best way to look at things.

Answer 9

Easy, the Bible does not contradict evolution. Succession of events in Genesis and that time is irrelevant to God describe evolution. Its all up to how one wants to interpret the Bible.

Answer 10

Evolutionary propagandists are guilty of switching the meaning of 'evolution' part way through an argument - to simply produce examples of change over time, call this ‘evolution,’ then imply that the Darwinism is thereby proven or even essential, and creation disproved.
The main scientific objection to Darwinism is not that changes occur through time, and neither is it about the size of the change The key issue is the type of change required—to change microbes into men requires changes that increase the genetic information content.
NONE of the alleged proofs of ‘evolution in action’ provide a single example of functional new information being added to genes. Rather, they all involve sorting and/or loss of existing information.