• 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!

How do you reconcile the creating God of the bible with the reality of evolution.

The bible is filled with "God created" yet modern cosmology and evolution theory points to no godly intervention. How do I believe in the Bible's message inspite of this?
 
Last edited:

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
This is a duplicate thread, so I recommend you contact the moderator to have it removed.
 

Orbit

I'm a planet
When I was a Christian, I used to tell myself that Genesis was tribal mythology, not meant to be taken literally. Problem solved.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Can everybody see dir threads? I doubled it because I thought everybody would see this one.
That may be against forum rules that are against spamming, but the moderators will make that decision, so you can leave it be and they can remove it if they deem it a violation. Don't worry, you'll not be in trouble.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
It's fine to cross-post a thread when you've got one in a DIR (where responses are restricted to those who are part of the group) and one in a non-DIR (where responses are open to more of our members).

As for the OP's question, I've always felt it a bit strange how often questions like these get asked. It's my understanding that this question gets asked in part because various Christian traditions deliberately blur or ignore the line between mythos and logos - a trend perpetuated by lackluster (and by lackluster, I mean mostly nonexistent) study in the fields of theology and religion by the general public. To frame the problem simply, there's been a popularization of treating religious mythos as a science textbook or a historical treatise instead of as mythos. The problem goes away the moment you stop doing that. You might find Karen Armstrong's "A Short History of Myth" useful as you mull over these issues for yourself, @SerenelyBlue. NPR has an interview about the book and a short expert available here - https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4992705
 

Orbit

I'm a planet
But Jesus and Paul took Genesis seriously. There must have been some message that is real?

Jesus and Paul came before science was invented. Of course they took it seriously. But Jesus was God, so he should have known everything, you say. This line of reasoning highlights why people leave the faith--there are too many nonsensical assertions in the Bible that are internally inconsistent.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
How do you reconcile the creating God of the bible with the reality of evolution?

The same way I reconcile Santa Clause with the celebration of Christmas. The first is a mythical/symbolic representation, and the second is the actual observed phenomena.
 

The Anointed

Well-Known Member
The space station and all its intricate and complex ground support systems evolved from the wheel, through the process of intelligent design.

The billions of creations that evolved from the Wheel, were created by intelligent design, each creation being an expression of the heights to which the mind of the creator had evolved at that point in time, until the day that the creator said, "And now let us create a Space Station, etc.

The infrastructure needed by the creator of the Space Station, took thousands upon thousands of years to set in place, and today, the creator can make other Space Stations in much, much shorter times.

Just as today, there are multiple universes within this eternal and boundless Cosmos, each universal body developing within itself a supreme personality of Godhead, each Body occupying their own separate positions in Space Time, and each being a Son of God the creator.

This is my belief.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I don't see why this Creator is necessary, as all this progress can be explained with ordinary, familiar, actual causes.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
I don't see why this Creator is necessary, as all this progress can be explained with ordinary, familiar, actual causes.
None of it has been "explained" by any means. So we are free to imagine the explanation as being whatever we want, and to believe it or not believe it as we choose.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
"Cogito ergo sum?"
More like, "anything is possible when so little is known". We have no idea what caused or sustains existence in the way that it does. So we are free to imagine it's origin and purpose any way we like, so long as we remember that we are imagining rather than knowing.
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
When I was a Christian, I used to tell myself that Genesis was tribal mythology, not meant to be taken literally. Problem solved.
I don't see how it solves the problem.

Why dismiss it as not intended to be taken literally? Hopefully you have something more substantial than "a literal interpretation seems ridiculous by our modern understanding."

Once you've cleared that other hurdle, you have other questions to deal with, like "if it wasn't meant to be taken literally, how was it meant to be taken?" and "what meaning was the author trying to express?"

It's fine - when justified - to interpret a passage non-literally, but interpreting it in a way that renders it meaningless is a dishonest - or at least unthinking - approach. Regardless of whether a pasaage was intended as a literal chronicle, a metaphoric fable, or as poetry, the author put a lot of work into trying to express some sort of meaning.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
None of it has been "explained" by any means. So we are free to imagine the explanation as being whatever we want, and to believe it or not believe it as we choose.


I know of 28 different explanations. Some even have the benefit of evidence, no god required for any.

But on the contrary. Those who believe the genesis account, or any of the many different creator god stories have no explanation other than god did it.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
More like, "anything is possible when so little is known". We have no idea what caused or sustains existence in the way that it does. So we are free to imagine it's origin and purpose any way we like, so long as we remember that we are imagining rather than knowing.
So what level of confidence should we demand before we believe something?
Religious belief seems to be based on nothing but faith. Science is based on evidence and reason. But the religious seem to apply a Cartesian requirement to scientific belief and no requirement for religious belief.
 
Top