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How Does the Existence of God Negate Darwinian Evolution?

McBell

Resident Sourpuss
DNA is too complex to evolve from primordial soup. Life from Life...or Not?
facepalm.png
 

thomas t

non-denominational Christian
Then why would anyone think the theory of evolution was more a problem for the existence of God than germ theory, quantum theory, or tectonic plate theory?

That's what I was hoping to learn when I posted the OP.

Let me post my view and compare plate tectonics to evolution.
The Theory of Evolution says that all life came from one single common ancestor (LUCA).
The moment God interferes and creates just one living being seperately.... the Theory of Evolution is wrong, because it says there were no more than just one common ancestors for all life, they are very precise when it comes to determining the number of universal common ancestors.

Let's now assume God creates a mountain range just north of Bamberg, Germany. The Theory of Plate Tectonics would still be working, in my opinion, and the movement of the plates would still be working, too, as the movement stems from somewhere deep in the ground. The mountain range would just be placed on top and everything would be as it used to be.

That's the difference between the Theory of Evolution and other scientific theories where God is not excluded from interfering.

This is how I see it.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
the Theory of Evolution is [in that case] wrong, because it says there were no more than just one common ancestors for all life, they are very precise when it comes to determining the number of universal common ancestors.
The theory of evolution doesn't quite say that. It says that if abiogenesis occurred in more than one form, no other such form survived to leave evidence; and without that evidence we have no basis to suppose there was more than one form.
 

thomas t

non-denominational Christian
The theory of evolution doesn't quite say that. It says that if abiogenesis occurred in more than one form, no other such form survived to leave evidence;
ok, let me put it that way: the Theory of Evolution rules out that God created one living being that still has progeny today, in seperate creation.
Meaning that the ToE rules out that there was a second ancestor made by God that is still relevant today for DNA.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
The issue with evolution is explaining the origin of the first life. Life didn't generate spontaneously from nonliving chemicals.
No, Evolution isn’t about the origin of first life.

That’s ABIOGENESIS, which is currently active and working “hypothesis”, not a “scientific theory”.

As to Evolution is a “scientific theory”, it is about the ability to changes of the population (species) over time.

Abiogenesis and Evolution are two different fields in biology.

People who are not good at biology or never studied biology, often confuse Evolution with Abiogenesis.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
DNA is too complex to evolve from primordial soup. Life from Life...or Not?
Also from your quote "...Life only comes from life. This was the law established by the Author of Life, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—Jesus Christ..."

From the time of Pasteur in your link, it has become increasingly obvious that life does not persist through miracles but through physical processes in a continuous chain. The significance of this is enormous and is analogous. Each generation in the church proves to the next its sincerity, and that way the evidence of things unseen is preserved. Not through expurgation of doubt or through closing our ears or drowning out sound. It is not that which enters a person which makes us unclean. Things we hear cannot harm us. Even supposing evolutionary theory was incorrect it should have zero effect on the church. It can't, because that isn't how things are ordered.

Not DNA alone but the process of cell function is complicated. Everybody knows it is complicated, but evolutionary theory depends only upon two truths. It is as a pillar because of these two truths and needs not to answer the question of the origin of the cell or of DNA, because it is heavily evidenced. These are the immense spectrum of creatures all of which are similar to one another, such that you can walk your fingers from any one species on the taxonomic tree to any other species. That is the first truth, unshakeable. The second truth is that there are natural functions which can guide speciation without need for a breeder. These are sufficient to establish evolution forever. It is obvious how one species can be derived from a different one.
 

gnostic

The Lost One
From all these replied below...

Small changes within a species can exist. But you cant go from one kind of being to another kind of being. Microevolution can happen-macro evolution can never happen.
Abiogenesis is macro evolution. DNA is too complex to have evolved from primordial soup.
DNA is too complex to evolve from primordial soup. Life from Life...or Not?

...you definitely weren’t good in biology at all, because your posts demonstrated you are absolutely clueless, as well as making so many false claims that you don’t understand.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
ok, let me put it that way: the Theory of Evolution rules out that God created one living being that still has progeny today, in seperate creation.
Meaning that the ToE rules out that there was a second ancestor made by God that is still relevant today for DNA.
Basic genetics tells us that there never were only two people. Besides that any reasonable Christian does not take the Adam and Eve myth literally since it paints God as being incompetent and evil.
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
I would like to understand from members how they would think or believe that the existence of God negates Darwinian evolution. Does it?

No, it doesn't. Otherwise you wouldn't have a pope who believes in a god being and who also believes that evolution is the method that this god being used to create a widely divergent number of life forms on the planet.
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
Depends on what we assume about this God.

Evolutionary theory is predicated on the idea that evolution is an unguided process. If it were guided by a God, then a significant amount of evolutionary theory would be wrong.

I don't see a contradiction... if you believe in a god that is responsible for EVERYTHING. We may view the formation of a storm front to be an 'unguided process', but if I believe that a god being is responsible for all wind and all low and high pressure systems and all of the 'random' factors that we know are required for certain storm fronts to develop then there is no contradiction.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
The issue with evolution is explaining the origin of the first life. Life didn't generate spontaneously from nonliving chemicals.
There is evidence that at one time there was no life - and now there is. So it arose somehow. That is what is meant by the term abiogenesis.

As to how it arose, we don't know yet, but we assume natural processes were responsible, just as we do in any other form of scientific investigation. This way of working is fundamental to the scientific method.

Evolution is a quite separate theory, as others have pointed out, which is well worked-out and has a huge amount of observational evidence to support it. .
 
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thomas t

non-denominational Christian
Besides that any reasonable Christian does not take the Adam and Eve myth literally
I am a reasonable Christian taking the Adam and Eve story literally.
it paints God as being incompetent and evil
except that it doesn't.
Basic genetics tells us that there never were only two people.
God might have recreated people after the flood then.

(BTW for Christian theology, as I see it, it only matters that all people have somehow a connection to Adam, because it says they all are made sinners in the wake of Adam's sin, see Romans 5:18-19. In my opinion, Adam somehow passed that sin on, be it through progeny or some other mechanism. In my opinion, it can't be ruled out that perhaps that sin is passed on to people that aren't even relatives, according to the Bible)
 
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Audie

Veteran Member
ok, let me put it that way: the Theory of Evolution rules out that God created one living being that still has progeny today, in seperate creation.
Meaning that the ToE rules out that there was a second ancestor made by God that is still relevant today for DNA.

The problem for you in this is you keep having to make up problems for a theory you don't know enough about it to make real comments.
 

exchemist

Veteran Member
Yes, it is indeed a bit like Lamarckism. Lamarck however failed to give a logical explanation for how the changes came about on a deeper level (too little was known about genetics) and Darwin could not yet imagine that the will of an animal or plant could effect the attraction of certain viruses that could alter the genome either. Nor can the present scientific community for that matter.

So both Lamarckism and Darwinism were based on too little, but Lamarck was on the right track.
Atheist will never admit that power of mind or consciousness has any direct influence on matter or indeed on life (except indirectly through the use of muscle power or life style). They also deny the effects of homeopathy for similar reasons.

But life is not just a special level or organic chemistry, it hovers between pure consciousness and the expressed world of matter. The theory of evolution and medicine will only make greater progress if they start to fathom this part of reality much more than they are able to do now.
Anyone with an ounce of scientific training will dismiss a scam like homeopathy.:rolleyes: Atheism is neither here nor there.

But I see you mention "pure consciousness". Perhaps I'd better bow out.;)
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I am a reasonable Christian taking the Adam and Eve story literally.

except that it doesn't.

God might have recreated people after the flood then.

(BTW for Christian theology, as I see it, it only matters that all people have somehow a connection to Adam, because it says they all are made sinners in the wake of Adam's sin, see Romans 5:18-19. In my opinion, Adam somehow passed that sin on, be it through progeny or some other mechanism. In my opinion, it can't be ruled out that perhaps that sin is passed on to people that aren't even relatives, according to the Bible)
One cannot be a "reasonable Christian" and take the Adam and Eve story literally. One has to believe in a lying God and that does not seem to reasonable to me. The same applies to the Noah's Ark myth. Again, simple genetics tells us that there were never only 8 people either, and especially not a mere few thousand years ago. What I call "The Lesson of the Cheetah" tells us that.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
I see what you mean that later interventions would be possible. What I refer to is the astonishing evidence of gradual change which looks exactly like cruel experimentation as well as the obvious weaknesses and throwbacks causing extinctions as well as suffering. The full tree of species represents millions of years of suffering and death which overall is good for us, since we exist. Overall its in our favor but doesn't look like a pleasant process. Rather to me it speaks of the physical world as separate from spiritual. It doesn't rule out miracles, but it is incompatible to me with planning a perfected species. In William Blakes poem The Tyger he asks "...did he who made the lamb make thee?" Its chilling to consider someone would have created the world like ours with so much suffering on purpose. I don't mean occasionally there is a problem. I mean that the path through the tree to our species is full of agony, fear, murder etc. There are reasons that I can't connect this with a God called 'Love' by NT authors. Millions of species exist, and they clearly fit into a tree of life; and that tree has required quintillions of painful lives and deaths on its way to making humans. Here at the apex of time we stand. All of that death just for us? It is too horrible. A wise man cares for his animals. Would a merciful God, more merciful than a man, plan such a terrible path or cruel experimentation? I can't think that.

Regarding how animals suffer -- death is an intellectual abstraction, and an animal doesn't fear an abstract idea of course, doesn't think of it, doesn't get anxious about it, but just has emotions from instincts generally. They fear predators, but don't fear death. They don't suffer the way humans do generally, where a human can feel emotions such as sadness at their own dying, or peace about it. For an animal, they seem to be more in-the-moment, living each moment without regrets or disappointments and so on.

But about the Tiger and the lamb, there are words about this --

5 Righteousness will be his belt
and faithfulness the sash around his waist.

6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.

9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

Isaiah 11 NIV

and

1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” a for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Revelation 21 NIV


That perfect world is one to be realized, brought about. He will make it so.
 
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