Evolution

[Hats Off]

I chose 'round' earth and 'other' regarding evolution. What I think is a problem is when someone considers that perhaps the earth was not a literal 6 day creation and they are considered then to be a person who cannot believe in God until they first accept the literal descriptive story in Genesis. As if the entire scriptures rest on believing this account literally. My selection of 'other' then is I don't see this as a literal doctrine that must be believed to be saved.

If we can't believe the beginning of the Bible, where are we going to start believing? Do we skip the entire Old Testament? The New Tribes Mission or Ethnos as it is called today says the only way to teach is to start at the beginning. Seems to make sense to me. Choosing which part of the Bible to believe and which part to set aside seems dangerous and certainly not very Anabaptist.

[silentreader]

I used to be firmly convinced of theistic evolution. While I think groups like Answers in Genesis sweep over some of the difficulties of their theory, they are much more rational than I had first assumed and do a good job of showing difficulties in the evolutionary theories. I guess I still lean toward theistic evolution of some kind, but am in no way certain.

Curious if you, or anyone else on here for that matter, have read anything by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati?

[Sudsy]

I chose 'round' earth and 'other' regarding evolution. What I think is a problem is when someone considers that perhaps the earth was not a literal 6 day creation and they are considered then to be a person who cannot believe in God until they first accept the literal descriptive story in Genesis. As if the entire scriptures rest on believing this account literally. My selection of 'other' then is I don't see this as a literal doctrine that must be believed to be saved.

If we can't believe the beginning of the Bible, where are we going to start believing? Do we skip the entire Old Testament? The New Tribes Mission or Ethnos as it is called today says the only way to teach is to start at the beginning. Seems to make sense to me. Choosing which part of the Bible to believe and which part to set aside seems dangerous and certainly not very Anabaptist.

I believe one can believe God created this world and that He planned it carefully and designed it to be hospitable to man. It is not that one does not believe the account of creation but rather may consider it unnecessary to be taken as literal as it reads. We certainly don't take everything in the bible as literal, do we ? Jesus is said to be "the door" but we know this is not referring to being a literal door. Paul talks about the primary belief in Jesus that saves us. Nothing about the need to believe everything literally in the 66 books assembled and called the bible.

We Anabaptists 'set aside' or 'cherry pick' what parts of the bible to believe literally all the time. In this article this is stated

http://mennoworld.org/2014/03/03/column ... g-genesis/

The Anabaptists viewed the Bible as foundational, but they weren’t interested in empty belief-dueling. According to Walter Klaassen, the Anabaptists “were most concerned, not with the intellectual questions, but with humble obedience to Jesus to whom the scriptures testify” (Anabaptism in Outline). Beliefs need to connect with living.

And I think Anabaptists believe we take the words of Jesus more literally than most other groups of Christians. But that doesn't ensure our literal interpretations are always what was being taught.

[RZehr]

That is true, but it’s worth noting that for hundreds of years Christians believed in Genesis 1, while also understanding Jesus being a figurative door.

I don’t think the fall in acceptance of a literal 6 day creation is unrelated to modernism.

As happens often, Christians became seduced by the worlds ideas of evolution and became open minded instead of canon minded. And because the Christians couldn’t handle the scoffing of society, they try to balance the two ideas.

[Joy]

That is true, but it’s worth noting that for hundreds of years Christians believed in Genesis 1, while also understanding Jesus being a figurative door.

I don’t think the fall in acceptance of a literal 6 day creation is unrelated to modernism.

As happens often, Christians became seduced by the worlds ideas of evolution and became open minded instead of canon minded. And because the Christians couldn’t handle the scoffing of society, they try to balance the two ideas.

Exactly.

[JimFoxvog]

Curious if you, or anyone else on here for that matter, have read anything by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati?

An occasional article.

[Josh]

That is true, but it’s worth noting that for hundreds of years Christians believed in Genesis 1, while also understanding Jesus being a figurative door.

I don’t think the fall in acceptance of a literal 6 day creation is unrelated to modernism.

As happens often, Christians became seduced by the worlds ideas of evolution and became open minded instead of canon minded. And because the Christians couldn’t handle the scoffing of society, they try to balance the two ideas.

It’s a rather big assumption that Christians used to believe in Ken Ham-style Genesis literalism, particularly his demands that we believe in a specific age of the universe (despite him changing this exact number in the 1980s).

[Soloist]

There is no reason to doubt the biblical account based on isotope dating, three possibilities that allow for a literal understanding of the 6 day creation is the so called gap theory that God created the heavens and earth and then waited for a few million years before continuing. Another is that something related to the flood changed the decay rate of isotopes. My personal theory that I haven’t heard people suggest is the aged earth theory. This theory in construct states that God made a fully functional earth with isotopes already decayed with fully formed dirt and other layers already present. If you take a literal read, rain did not fall until after God brought mist upon the earth to water the plants. Scientists would state that rock doesn’t break down without water, wind or some chemical action. Thus we know God created dirt. Is it to hard to assume God set this up with a reflection of the science He designed? This basic idea also would fit in with a finite universe rather then an infinite one. Energy seeks to go to lesser forms. Considering evolution though, I think it’s dangerous to take a stand on the idea of no new information that some Christians believe. We’ve demonstrated transfer of new information through both horizontal gene transfer and vertical. Does this support evolution? It really depends on what your perception would see. Latest theory’s are starting to support intelligent design but not as you might think... they have a problem that the evolution demonstrated is almost always positive which flies in the face of random. Also how can repair enzymes ignore positive changes to DNA but repair negative ones? This also from a Christian standpoint begs the question of how a folded protein could know how to fix the problem without a blueprint, namely DNA... the latest theory suggests that the cell is much smarter than we think and that it’s guided evolution. Anything but God designed... from my view, which came first? The protein reading the DNA to copy it/make proteins? Or the DNA?

[Josh]

My personal theory that I haven’t heard people suggest is the aged earth theory.

How is this different from actually believing the earth is older than 6,000 years? It supposes that God created the universe as some giant sham.

[Soloist]

My personal theory that I haven’t heard people suggest is the aged earth theory.

How is this different from actually believing the earth is older than 6,000 years? It supposes that God created the universe as some giant sham.

I think you misunderstand my position. I’m saying God created dirt within the prospect of scientific investigation. Either the gap theory is correct, mine is correct or isotope dating is completely full of nonsense.