We Never Know
No Slack
Is that something like Pascal's wager.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Accepting evolution yet still believing in a creator.
- Thread starter We Never Know
- Start date
No, it's something many theists do. One just says "God made all things and guided evolution." It's a fairly common position.
We Never Know
No Slack
Yet thats not what the evidence shows. So there has to be a reason for a belief in a creator.
an anarchist
Your local anarchist.
Another stance is that God created fully evolved species and also created an aged universe. Simply popped it all into existence some 6000 years ago, already made. That’s what I believe
Personal experiences of the creator; mystical experiences, etc.
They may have seen God, argued for God, and so on, to come to that idea.
I think it all comes down to how you view God.
Does one view God outside of the creative process?
Does one view God outside of the creative process?
Just what do you think the evidence shows?
One of the factors influencing my acceptance of Meher Baba was the central role of evolution in the progression of the developing soul through various kingdoms of nature to man, then reincarnation and finally involution along the spiritual path.
I also found this from Rumi which says the same thing in other words.
I died to being mineral and growth began.
I died to vegetable growth and attained to the state of animals.
I died from animality and became Adam:
why then should I fear?
When have I become less by dying?
Next I shall die to being a human being,
so that I may soar and lift up my head among the angels.
Yet I must escape even from that angelic state:
everything is perishing except His Face.*
Once again I shall be sacrificed, dying to the angelic;
I shall become that which could never be imagined
I shall become nonexistent.
Nonexistence sings its clear melody,
Truly, unto Him shall we return!**
-- Mathnawi III:3900-3906
Bingo.
My heart told me there was a divine reality. My mind told me that science and the scientific method are the way we learn about how the universe works. I could not accept any person or path which denied the findings of science explicitly including evolution.
King Phenomenon
Well-Known Member
I reject evolution as I believe an act of destruction/creation happened fairly recently and will happen again fairly recently. I believe nothing is forever. Also I think the act of creation would include earth with people on it. To me that would be worthy of creation. What kind of God would create just an empty void. Not my kind. Call me crazy. I’ll say, life’s short. I’m going to dream a little.
exchemist
Veteran Member
Agree the first part but not the "guiding evolution" part. That is ID, which is now a discredited pseudoscience.
The processes of evolution are fairly well understood now and there is nothing to suggest they do not follow from the "laws of nature". If one believes in God, I think one should focus on why the "laws"* of nature are they way they are (or more properly why the underlying order in nature is the way it is). This is a question that science cannot answer.
*The so-called "laws of nature" seem to be man-made constructs to describe and model the order that we observe. Most "laws" are named after the people that first elucidated them. And most of them are sometimes broken.
So what about all the other galaxies, stars, planets and such that we have discovered over the last several decades? A mere nothing to some creator?
RestlessSoul
Well-Known Member
I believe in a Creator. I am not a creationist in the sense that word is generally used, because I believe in evolution. I see nothing contradictory in those beliefs.
It probably helps, that I am also not an American*
*love you Yanks, but you're all nuts. I blame King George III
It probably helps, that I am also not an American*
*love you Yanks, but you're all nuts. I blame King George III
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Wouldn't that make god a liar? For example, when we look out into the universe at light that appears to have taken millions or billions of years to get here, we'd be watching fiction. Why litter the genomes of creatures with solid evidence that they are related and had a common ancestor? Why, for that matter, all the sloppy design? We are amazing as the result of evolution but an engineer that come up with some aspects of our 'design' would be incompetent.
ratiocinator
Lightly seared on the reality grill.
Unsupported assertion.
Why guided? That would mean that God's creation needs some adjustments, every now and then. Which would turn the idea of fine tuning into something more like rough tuning needing corrections on the way.
What about setting the initial conditions, and let it run without any intervention whatsoever?
Ciao
- viole
If causality is a thing, and the universe is the effect, doesn't it stand to reason that there is a cause? Wouldn't that cause be the "creator?"
exchemist
Veteran Member
So God put the fossils in the rocks to fool the scientists? I see.
I could never believe in a God that played such cruel and pointless tricks. It sounds like how the gods of the ancient Greeks were said to behave.