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How can you accept evolution and still have a spiritual reality, and/or a God faith

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
Since evolution is based completely in naturalism and a materialistic view of the universe I believe God and spirit are then totally removed from this worldview.
Do you feel similarly about other non-supernaturalistic subject matters?
 

CLee421

Bible believing-Face painting-Musical Momma
Uh, sorry, but what you are saying... is just ignorance of biology presented with a brave attempt at being convincing.

What is inaccurate?

At the risk of hijacking the post for a likely endless debate.....
 

CLee421

Bible believing-Face painting-Musical Momma
I would be interested in understanding how you came to that conclusion.

Someone started a new thread to "educate" me on science...and evolution...

I'll probably get to it tomorrow. I'm sure I'll share my views and be called ignorant there as well. Pop some popcorn - see ya there.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
What is inaccurate?

At the risk of hijacking the post for a likely endless debate.....
I now realize that this is not the thread for that. Talk.Origins or @Subduction Zone 's thread are much better fits.

Although really, I would rather not go there again. It is a settled matter already, and has been for over a century.
 

CLee421

Bible believing-Face painting-Musical Momma
I now realize that this is not the thread for that. Talk.Origins or @Subduction Zone 's thread are much better fits.

Although really, I would rather not go there again. It is a settled matter already, and has been for over a century.

You went there.

I was answering a question. I get called wrong but never with any basis.

Yep. Not here.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
You went there.

I was answering a question. I get called wrong but never with any basis.

Yep. Not here.
There is a basis. But it is a trivial one, and an unwelcome distraction from the parameters of this thread.
 

Jumi

Well-Known Member
Does evolution totally remove God, and spirit from reality.

If yes, how so?

If no, how so?
Not at all. People who fight evolution are fighting windmills and trying to pull people in to do the same.

In my corner of Europe theists near universally accepted evolution with no problems at all. It was thanks to fundamentalist ideas from the English speaking world that made something a problem that wasn't. Both theists and atheists would laugh at the American debates over evolution, pi=3 and all kinds of moon landing hoax-theories. That was when membership in church was nearly universal. Now that we also have the fundies sawing the branches from under their religions, people are leaving the church in droves.
 

Jumi

Well-Known Member

In there I found one of the better quotes for creationist to consider:

Both Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) and Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975), were Christians and architects of the modern evolutionary synthesis. Dobzhansky, a Russian Orthodox, wrote a famous 1973 essay entitled Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution espousing evolutionary creationism:

"I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's, method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way... Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts... the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness."
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Does evolution totally remove God, and spirit from reality.

If yes, how so?

If no, how so?
Emphatically no.

As for why not, there is nothing special about evolution. It's just another well-supported theory of science, along with Newton's Laws, Plate Tectonics or the Kinetic Theory of Matter. Nobody seems to think these "totally remove God and spirit" from reality. The idea that evolution - somehow, unlike all the other theories of science - does this is absurd.

Some Christian sects find that treating Man as one of the animals - which evolution does of course - presents problems for their theology of the relationship between Man and God, that's all.

Rather than resolve this point by themselves, as most Christian denominations did a century ago, they have embarked on the Quixotic and futile enterprise of trying to attack the whole theory. :rolleyes:
 
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exchemist

Veteran Member
Well the popular science says there is no need to invoke God, or spiritual reality, not only in evolution, but cosmology too.

I tried to leave the question up to the reader to decide.
That would be because natural science is the study of the natural, i.e. not the supernatural, world.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
We disagree vehemently. No evidence I see for it whatsoever.

In short - the basic processes of reproduction. Meiosis and the complexities of how sperm and egg cells are made. New genetic information is never added in reproduction- only deleted or rearranged. No matter how many dogs you breed for how long you'll keep getting dogs.


Saying "add lots of time, it can happen" is air filled. We do not see this occur, ever.
But we do see evolution take place before our eyes in many well-documented examples: Drug-resistant cancers and bacteria, changes in appearance of moths, ring species in which the actual process of a new species forming can be seen, etc. So there is plenty of evidence, if you bother to learn about it.
 

stvdv

Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
26 jun 2018 stvdv 013 02
Well the popular science says there is no need to invoke God, or spiritual reality, not only in evolution, but cosmology too.
Let us be honest. Science is good at science but only "below the mind". God stuff is "above the mind". Mixing these gives astral mumbo jumbo IMO. Science beautifully explains evolution [on earth], a tiny bit of the cosmos is even explained.

It is not so much "there is no need to invoke God". I would say science have not the tools (yet) to "invoke God". When the scientist integrates spirituality, meditation then he has more to offer. Till then better stick to what he is good at.

Since evolution is based completely in naturalism and a materialistic view of the universe I believe God and spirit are then totally removed from this worldview.
Not necessarily. When the scientist is honest, and accept that he works below the mind, he has to admit that he can make no claims about God and spirit. So he can not remove them. He can say I remove them from the "worldview how I perceive it". But should add "spiritual masters have more view than I, so I can't claim anything here".

Thats the way that i saw it as well.
I would say: To get mutual respect between scientist and spiritualist, they both have to respect their fields of expertise. Scientists are blinded to not see God, because they don't meditate to explore the other realms [Plenty exceptions of well known scientists got their inventions in dream state]. Spiritualists are blinded by mis-interpretation of their scriptures and so called teachers who use religion to manipulate the people, just for money and control, not for truth and wisdom.

The trick is: "Common Sense" before "Divine Sense". If science proves something "below the senses", but scripture declares differently, then you better read scripture again, because quite obviously there must have been translation error, misinterpretation etc [of course sometimes science makes a mistake, but nowadays they double check most stuff with their supercomputers, pretty fast]. Of course science should not make claims about God, because that is not within their scope of expertise [they only deal with stuff below the mind]. Stick with that.

Few big obstacles giving misunderstanding and irritation: a)Ego + b)Power/Money/Control + c)MisUnderstanding + d)Brainwashed

Just a few thoughts I got from this interesting post.
 
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stvdv

Veteran Member: I Share (not Debate) my POV
26 jun 2018 stvdv 013 06
Nope.
Evolution removes the need to explain how humans were created.

But the question was not about humans, was it?
Just about God and spirituality
There is much more in this universe than humans
We like to think we are paramount, but are we? or is God?
 
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Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Why it remove God, spirit etc. ? I don't see anyone saying the same for gravity or magnetism. What's different?
You've never heard of the Theory of Intelligent Falling?

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University."

https://www.theonion.com/evangelical-scientists-refute-gravity-with-new-intellig-1819567984
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Does evolution totally remove God, and spirit from reality.

If yes, how so?

If no, how so?
My answer is no. It doesn't remove God or Spirit from reality. On the contrary, for me evolution is Spirit in motion creating everything you see, like the fingers of an artist shaping clay. The notion that God creating has to look like someone's interpretation of Genesis read like a child's story at bedtime, simply indicates a challenge with the readers mind, not the science.

The Theory of Evolution is more like the grown-up's reading of Genesis, which now understands the story's figures as metaphors, rather than facts. We can understand the Divine nature of Creation, while allowing it to be everything we observe and verify it to be in the sciences.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
Does evolution totally remove God, and spirit from reality.

If yes, how so?

If no, how so?

I'd think it would for people who have one
rigid and sadly mistaken idea of what "god"
is.

If it god of the 6 day poof 'n flood
or no god, then there is no god. And
we find a lot of people cannot do it
any other way.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Does evolution totally remove God, and spirit from reality.
It did in the 19th century, when it removed two major props to belief:

First, that nature was so complex and occasionally so beautiful that the only explanation was a divine designer; and

Second, the complementary view that the biblical account of creation made more sense than any alternative.

But many branches of religion have digested the science and now regard evolution as a divine tool which God chose to effect the diversity of life.

(Were I a believer, I'd take the view that it was much less complicated, indeed much less silly, to think of evolution as always having done the divine will automatically, than to imagine God stepping in from time to time to tweak a gene here, a protein there &c.)
 

David T

Well-Known Member
Premium Member
In theory, no.

In reality? My conclusion, yes.

There are reasons the Bible doesn't line up with it (only "God" reference I can speak for)

Besides that, I didn't come to see evolution as false because of the Bible, but research on natural processes and what we actually observe in nature.
So you are saying Ken ham intelligent design folks are in fact biblical experts? Lol based on what evidence?
 
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