Can a Christian believe in evolution and do Christians believe neanderthals were human?

[jinglebelly]

Just curious

"From my experience the right wing Creationist Christians who argue for a young earth also see things like same sex marriage, stem cell research and abortion as major issues of doctrine, whereas left wing evolution supporting Christians would place more emphasis on social justice and speaking up for the poor."

I totally disagree. I believe in Creation, I can't get my head around anyone who believes that God is all powerful and can do anything except create the earth in seven days. The wind and waves recognised Jesus's voice because He spoke them into existence. If I don't believe God is powerful enough to do that, what else don't I believe? Was Jesus's death enough?

I believe that abortion is a personal issue and whilst something I would not do that's for someone else and their conscience. My faith and relationship with God is mine, yours is yours, mine is none of your business, yours is none of mine.

I know scientists who believe in creation and in personal faith. I also don't personally know any Christians who don't believe that. I'm not sure how the two can be separated when it's both a matter of believing what the Bible tells us is the truth.

"ie the earth is flat type"

No one ever believed the earth was flat, it was a Victorian novel, no one even thought that anyone thought the earth was flat until then.

Brilliant post RuthyandBrendan! Another point is why does a giraffe have a long neck or a bird have immunity to the poison of a spider. We're told that the giraffe evolved the valve to stop it's head exploding because of the blood pressure it needs to get blood to it's brain but for millions of years we have to believe that lots of giraffes heads were exploding and the species wasn't wiped out. Or we have to believe that a whole species of bird wasn't wiped out by eating a poisonous spider for millions of years whilst it got around to evolving the immunity to it.

lissie, who said he didn't?

I'm not coming back to this thread because I know how they go!

Mardybra - it depends what you think God was trying to do in creating the world in that way. If God had put lots of reptiles on the planet and they evolved into mammals because they "weren't very well designed" then I'd agree that God got it wrong.

But life started with only single-celled organisms. Or actually, self-replicating chemicals which didn't even have the structure of a cell. And from there they had the opportunity to develop in lots of different ways to fill every niche on the planet.

I believe that God could have created the world in 6 days with every species as it is now. But I believe that God didn't choose to do that, but instead let life join in with "creating" itself - I don't presume to understand why God decided to do it that way, but I think all the evidence fits with that rather than the direct creation of each species.

Giraffes heads did not explode for millions of years. The blood supply in your own neck also has valves to help regulate the blood flow. So do your legs and arms and the rest of your body (you can prove it yourself on the visible veins in your arms if you feel like it...)

Yes the ones in the giraffe are stronger than yours - giraffes didn't wake up one morning with necks the current size, they gradually evolved to be longer over many, many generations. Over the same lengths of time, the valves got stronger.

Changes in the genes happen randomly over time. Those changes might give a variety of neck lengths and a variety of valve strengths. Individuals with longer necks had an advantage, but any which had a neck so long they had blood pressure problems because of it would not have an advantage so would die out / not reproduce. You then have a population with longer necks on average. There is still a variety of valves. As necks get longer still (it continues to be an advantage), those with stronger valves have the advantage, as they don't have blood pressure problems. So those with weaker valves die out / don't reproduce and you end up with a population with long necks and strong valves.

i believe the bible is truth, all of it, even creation, God is creator, the old testament is as true and important as the new. Jesus himself stressed the importance of it and referred to creation, if you believe Jesus is God and follow his commands and teaching, how can you dismiss this?

imo you either believe it all, or none of it, how can anyone with faith pick which miracles are true and which are not?

and yes i know i am likely to be criticised for this, 'how can you with all the evolution talk etc etc' but i am not here to criticise anyone elses beliefs in the theory of evolution, again, its just a theory, you either believe it or you dont, but i will say there is plenty of historical, scientific and archaelogical evidence that many biblical happenings just may have happened. please have an open mind

if you are right and i am wrong when i am dead i will not know or care.

if i am right and you are wrong, well, believe what you will.

Stuff I find it hard that anyone could live a life following the bible as whole truth.

for instance do you never eat shell fish, do you only have sex for proceation and not pleasure? there is in my opinion too many aspects of the bible that relate to interpritation, the message to you may be recived in a different manner as the message I recieve from it.

I am a catholica and I do belive that we as humans have free will wether that be given by god in the terms of adam and eve story or developed over time as a result of gods intervention. therfore he allowed us to develop as free thinking progressive spieces and so why is it wrong to develop or interpret his message to fit in with our society.

if you compare gospols they are all a different interpretation of the same events, but some deliver differing messages.

I do find the 'why didn't God get it right at first' a really odd argument. It's incredibly arrogant about humanity, isn't it? The implication being that we, and the world we currently live in, is just so much better than any other possible stage in evolution. It's not, not necessarily. Evolution isn't all about 'improving the species', it's about the species adapting to suit its shifting needs.

Who's to say that we're 'better' souls, or happier, than Neanderthals or even blobs of slightly sentient goo?

I don't understand Custardo's point about theory. Evolution isn't a theory like other theories, because often when people use the word 'theory' in everyday speech they mean something that is speculative and has no real evidence base. This is not the case with evolution.

Evolution is a scientific theory, in the same way that gravity is a theory or various combinations of principles in cancer therapeutics are a theory.

What concerns me about this debate in wider society is that when people have it, they believe it is of no real importance because they are just discussing events that happened a long time age (the dinosaurs, noah's ark) and who believes what has no consequence.

But of course evolution is happening now, and is important for scientific research and wider society. Cancer is evolving, and continued funding of research involving principles from the theory of evolution is really important. The creationist lobby threatens such research. I suppose we can all just get down on out knees and pray when we get cancer though.

RAB, your post makes very little scientific sense and is full of factual errors. I'm not going to go through it line by line, but will say that macroevolution has been observed by scientists on many occasions.

yes indeed, "who knows?"

There are career Christians, Bishops etc

They seem to be in a different position on belief to the rest of us. 

They climb the greasy pole like politicos.

I get the impression that even practising Christians have doubts at time.

Terry Wogan openly says he lost his faith.

This is a good thread; but answers are not
likely to be forthcoming. Just questions.
cheers "Gabby"

Gabby as long as we keep getting questions and debate instead of bunfights, this will continue being a good thread!

To my mind the whole point about being a scientist is admitting that you don't know all the answers and that you probably never will. All you do as a scientist is find the best answers you can based on the evidence you are able to find with the tools of your time. If you have integrity, you do all that in the virtual certainty that someone is going to come along later, have better technology and tools and will use those resources to come up with an alternative answer which is more plausible than yours. That scientist, however, would have been unable to make that progress without your original work so you can't get despondent about it. You just have to accept that you can only be the shining spire for a short while and then you end up in the foundations - both roles are vital for the progress of knowledge.

The whole point about science vs faith is that scientific knowledge and answers start with evidence, whilst religious knowledge starts with a leap of faith - that is, because you hold something to be absoluttely and incontrovertibly true, you are thereby choosing not to go looking for all the evidence - just that which supports your world view.

It is for this reason that I feel that Intelligent Design should never be taught in science classes - it is first and foremost a faith-based position.

I believe it is perfectly possible to reconcile faith with the belief that on balance, the theory of evolution is likely to be correct. The only exception to this is if you are a young-earth Creationist, and it is impossible to debate with people who have such entrenched views. (Though it has to be said their literal interpretation of the Bible does mostly tend towards the selective, given how few people are stoned for wearing mixed fibres or eating shellfish. For which we should be thankful.)

MillyR you are spot on in everything you say.

I think it has gone very well so far without resorting to a bung fight.

i didn't say it didn't have a factual base, but it is one theory and not the only one

Yes, but Custardo, based on the knowledge that we have available at present it is, in purely scientific terms, the most plausible one. Dismissing it as 'only' a theory gives equal credence to ID and Creationism and this is (once again going purely by the tenets of science) not justified.

Anyone who knows anything about quantum physics, will know just how little scientists know and understand

True, Katiestar but a scientist with integrity will admit this, whereas a Young Earth Creationist will do the opposite because they know.

im not dissmissing it, nor did i say it was only a theory... just that it is a theory, and not the only one

While I don't believe in the theory, I do believe in dinosaurs (God did make animals before Man). That all makes sense.

I go down the road of creation though-then again I'm a Christian who follows the Bible, some Christian's believe the Bible is a metaphor/symbol/code. There are many scientists who are practising Christians, who do not believe in Evolution.

MillyR Surely a theory will forever remain a theory/hypothesis until it is proven. As neither Evolution nor Creation can be "proven" (ie: backed with NEUTRAL evidence, that comes from something OTHER THAN another theory) they both remain up in the air.

dinosaurs aren't a theory though are they? there are fuck off big skeletons in museums 'n' shit

so do you believe that god did it in 6 days and all that shit?

but, there is more than faith involved in the evalutionary theory

Ummm wasn't Charles Darwin a Christian?

Sorry meant to write...and then became agnostic.

I'm not meant to live life on the edge like this.

i don't believe in evolution because i totally believe in the bible, and yes custardo i do believe that God did it in 6days.

ladyofthemanor if you say you believe the bible, how then can you say 'God did make animals before Man'? when the bible clearly states that God made Man first , then made animals and Adam was the one giving names to the animals, not the other way round,

No it doesn't say that. Would you like me to quote from the Bible?

Custardo-I believe it was made in 6 days, I don't believe there were 24 hours in a day.

Genesis 1 verse 20- He made birds

21- He made sea animals

22- He told them to all multiply

24- He made the land produce living creatures to suit their types; livestock and wild animals etc.

26- THEN God said "let us make man in our image" and let them rule over all of sea/animals/fish/birds (things he had previously made).

So there.