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

[jinglebelly]

Just curious

Charles Darwin wasn't a particularly devout Christian, but I think his wife was more of a believer IIRC?

LadyOfTheManor - there really is a big difference between a scientific theory and a religious concept.

Scientific theory - looks at all the available evidence, suggests an explanation for it - looks for more evidence to see if it agrees or disagrees with the theory - refines the theory as required by the new facts, or throws it out completely. Theories also spawn new predictions - eg "if evolution did happen, we'd expect to find x and y" - can then look for those, or the opposite, or wait for things to be discovered which agree or disagree. The theory of evolution has been honed in that way for over 100 years, and is still the most convincing explanation of the available facts.

Religious concept - is happy to say "if the apparent facts don't fit, then your interpretation of the facts must be wrong" Does not lead to predictions which can be tested over time. Does not want to be refined by new facts.

Evolution cannot be "proven", but it can set itself up to be disproven and does so every day, and so far no-one is coming up with anything better in the way of scientific explanation.

Creation cannot be proven or disproven, because any criticism can be met with "You simply have to believe that God made it so"

Lady my apologies, of course its true,Gen 24 God starts with the living creatures and in 25 Man,,as always with these threads i end up saying the wrong thing,,agh,,

Blessed if it's any consolation the animals were made on the SAME DAY as man. And yes, Adam did get the name them!

AMum surely scientific theory is the same though? Remove the word God.

"You have to believe it because [our everchanging man made evidence] it's proven".

Darwin became a Christian much later on in his life. After abandoning his theory. Quite an amazing guy. There was a guy on Radio 4 on MOnday trying to complete his work without using "today's technology". He was quite remarkable too.

:o you would be surprised to know i am reading the bible and was reading something in exodus, then i go and make a mess of it, pretty , in my defence i have food poisoning so maybe its messing with my memory ladyofthemanor

I only know the order from memory because I re-wrote a childrens' Bible after getting rather irritated about the random order the authors kept placing things! Genesis is now my best known Biblical book!

THATS IT,,i was reading a book last night for my DD and YES it is random placed,,thats why,,agh, i am now tempted to read the actual bible for her,,,

LadyOfTheManor

"AMum surely scientific theory is the same though? Remove the word God.

"You have to believe it because [our everchanging man made evidence] it's proven"."

Not quite the same thing - scientific theory goes more like this:

"We think this is the most likely explanation because the evidence we have points that way. If new evidence becomes available that suggests we are wrong, we will adjust our answer accordingly."

Before you pounce - yes, there are scientists who become too fond of their own theories - but scientists with integrity live with the knowledge that at some point they are likely to have their theories at the very least corrected and refined, at the worst disproved.

Biblical literalists do not and cannot take this position.

I am not saying that one position is superior to the other, BTW.

JWs take that position. Despite "thriving" upon scriptural literalness, they believe God "came about" from Eons of energy of something and there was a big bang and the ability to Create came from that.

Then again I'm not a Witness so I can't really argue their point. My point being, they change their minds as often as scientists, at least, I, believe in the same thing..because it can't be disproven...!

But LOTM, do you think that because scientists change their minds, this means that their work is somehow less valid? Serious question, not a dig.

Me, I think the opposite - I think that being able to admit that you were wrong speaks of moral and intellectual integrity. This applies whether or not you are a scientist who also believes in God.

Mind you, integrity comes in many forms and I do respect people who are able to accept the Bible literally (though I'd like reassurance about their unwillingness to apply the nastier bits of Deuteronomy) and live by it - must be hard.

Look, still no bunfight!

Unusual for me...I'm normally in the middle of them!!

If they have to admit they're wrong then my guess is it's a work in progress, God making the Earth in 6 days hasn't changed...it isn't a work in progress.

I always go back to the atom and how they managed to disprove it was the smallest "thing" ever...

It's a work in progress, is science, and good on them for working so hard at it-but I tell you, it has already been worked out and finished!

LadyOfTheManor - many people do believe scientific theories just because they've been told them. But the difference is that you can go through them step by step and follow the logic and re-run the experiments and look again at the evidence, and decide whether or not to agree with their conclusions.

And you simply can't do that with religion.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in God, but the leap of faith needed to do that is something completely different from a rational ability to weigh up the evidence for a scientific theory. It's like comparing apples and oranges. Or maybe apples and cars. They're just totally different things.

You're right, but the thing is with following them and understand the "logic" is that you have to be of a particular mind set in order to do that, to me it isn't logical at all-completely the opposite, where as for a non-believe "an invisible man in the sky" making things is equally as ridiculous!

One last thing before I withdraw gracefully, but apparently many western children are now being born with either less than four or no wisdom teeth.

Is this an example of evolution in progress do you think?

No it isn't.

None of the males for 5 generations on my father's side had wisdom teeth. I also have none. Says a lot for my pearls

Hmmm but what about before those 5 generations? Wouldn't it be a gradual process? Apparently some people (dentists) argue that peoples jaws are becoming smaller over time.

Another thing I think about is what is a 'day' exactly, a human day is one revolution of the planet Earth, correct? So what was a day before the planet earth/our star system was created?

What I don't like is fundamentalists of any flavour, no-one knows not really, you can believe deeply but we don't know.

I think it all went a certain way based on the evidence I have seen, the faith I was raised in etc. But I don't know, I could be wrong, I could be right. I think Jesus had a lot of good things to say about how to live your life and try to keep to them.

But I am not sure about whether Christianity is the right religion or whether any of them are. I know I personally struggle with the concept of a loving God when I see some of the things that happen, and that random chance makes a lot more sense.

Humans have the capacity for such beauty and intelligence when we are not bickering and that appears to me to be almost divine.

LadyoftheManor, I'd always understood that Darwin died an agnostic, and did not 'reject' his theories?

For evolution to be working on it, you would need for people with fewer wisdom teeth to either survive or reproduce better than those with more. And I can't see that being likely. That's the way evolution works - a genetic change (to not producing wisdom teeth) could easily happen, but for it to become common in the population, those with the new version of the genes would need to pass it on better than people with the normal version of the gene.

If there was a real advantage to not having wisdom teeth (like not dying in your teens when they come in) then that would quickly spread. But the minor advantage of not wasting time making them, and fewer visits to the dentist, don't make you more likely to survive and reproduce and pass on your "improved" gene.

Morloth- I agree with that, I don't believe in the days of creation there was 24 hours in a day. Yes God created day and night, but there's no indication that the Earth took 24 hours to spin on its axis...perhaps that's wear some aspect of evolution comes into it? Similar to the wisdom teeth/appendix/tonsil argument....?

LOTM,

I always thought of the 24 hour period to be a metaphor, especially since the laws of physics dictate that the rotation of planets will change over time, so I'll concede that one.

I also don't see how having or not having wisdom teeth improves survival. I just think they're a pain and I hope my DCs don't get them.

Why not?

One way to interpret the Big Bang in accordance with the Bible is when God sais "Let there be light"

A1980,

Even though I'm an atheist, I've always liked that one.

And just to add - I'm really loving this thread, everyone is being so civilised and intelligent and reasonable.

We are probably setting an example for how we could achieve world peace.