Evolution verses’ Christianity.

[The servant]

It seems if I follow rightly that many Christians and evolution do not go together the argument about the understanding and the conflicts seems endless.
The Bible is very clear as are the words of the Son of God Jesus, whom I believe spoke also as the Bible was written on a spiritual level not on an earthly one as many assume it seems, to make things clearer with their earthly thoughts, with the earthly brain, “Intellect” formed from the dirt and upon death returns to the dirt!.

Let us take the words “Let there be Light” the 1st development with these words, were in the vicinity closest to God, and our earth was formed many millions of years later as one of the furtherest outpost from the Creator, the casting out referred to as in the Bible when man covered his nakedness, was not related as casting out from the earthly, but from the spiritual part of Creation known as Paradise for our further development.

The major problem between scientist and people who call themselves Christians is the understanding of the Bible in its true context, the way it was meant to be understood by us here on earth.
If scientist who argue against out Creator existing, could accepted the truth as it is put in the Bible, and not in the varied opinions of so many “evolution” could be more understandable by Christians and scientist alike, and I believe give atheist less room for argument!

Peace and Light

Peter

[JM]

Originally Posted by The servant

It seems if I follow rightly that many Christians and evolution do not go together the argument about the understanding and the conflicts seems endless.
The Bible is very clear as are the words of the Son of God Jesus, whom I believe spoke also as the Bible was written on a spiritual level not on an earthly one as many assume it seems, to make things clearer with their earthly thoughts, with the earthly brain, “Intellect” formed from the dirt and upon death returns to the dirt!.

Let us take the words “Let there be Light” the 1st development with these words, were in the vicinity closest to God, and our earth was formed many millions of years later as one of the furtherest outpost from the Creator, the casting out referred to as in the Bible when man covered his nakedness, was not related as casting out from the earthly, but from the spiritual part of Creation known as Paradise for our further development.

The major problem between scientist and people who call themselves Christians is the understanding of the Bible in its true context, the way it was meant to be understood by us here on earth.
If scientist who argue against out Creator existing, could accepted the truth as it is put in the Bible, and not in the varied opinions of so many “evolution” could be more understandable by Christians and scientist alike, and I believe give atheist less room for argument!

Peace and Light

Peter

I would disagree with you but there we go.. that is not new and the reason why people vary in their opinions about Truth

[friendly hardline atheist]

Hello Peter,

Your post sounds like a call for christians and atheists to start pulling on the same rope. Unfortunately I'll decline the offer.

First I would look back in time a bit. Many christian denominations held to the literalist interpretation for a very long time. Seems the right thing to do, taking something for what it says, rather than something completely different. Do you know the history of the flavour of christianity you hold to? Did they always take the non-literal, spiritual approach you now advocate?

Then the literalists were dragged out of their error, kicking and screaming. Many, some 40% in the US for instance, are still screaming against it. And those who got out of it didn't do so because of any self-correcting mechanism in faith. They had to be torn from it by the progress of our knowledge. Hence the hostility towards knowledge, thinking, science etc by e.g. the creationist nutter brigade that is still stuck in the Dark Ages.

So after the emberassment at the hands of science, many christians have now taken the 'don't take it literally' position you advocate. But why? People first read it for what is said (as one would). Science just showed that to be rubbish. Once that was clear, people should have realized how highly flawed the bible is, and dropped it for something better, like a biology book.

Instead, we are now supposed to accept the line that 'On the fourth day, God created.....' is metaphor for RNA slowly assembling out of smaller building blocks etc. Seems a poor losers excuse to me from people who just have great difficulty admitting defeat.
And even if you thought it was true, you should still accept that the bible is a waste of paper as a means to explain the world around us. Christians in the 4th century could hardly be expected to understand something that was only worked out by Wallace and Darwin a millennium and a half later. The 'spiritual meaning' was a recipe for a millenium and a half of getting it all wrong! So what use is the book of Genesis then? Understanding of the world around us comes from of labs, sheets of paper with equations on them, or from the zeros and ones inside computer memory.

So I'm not sharing the common ground with you that you invite me as atheist to do. Science has brought us the knowledge we have, on a good number of occasions opposed by the christians whom you now suggest we share ground with. No thanks, I don't tow the line that is often heard in the US of 'science and faith don't need to be at odds'. Let alone the idea that they should benefit from each other. I don't seek common ground. I would prefer to see religion driven off the field altogether.

greets,
Peter

[Someday]

I agree, we should look to history to examine how the early Christians interpreted Genesis. It wasn't widely interpreted literally until the protestants came along

Perhaps a direct quote from an early Christian may shed some truth here?

"What intelligent person will suppose that there was a first, a second and a third day, that there was evening and morning without the existence of the sun and moon and stars? Or that there was a first day without a sky? Who could be so silly as to think that God planted a paradise in Eden in the East the way a human gardener does, and that he made in this garden a visible and palpable tree of life, so that by tasting its fruit with one’s bodily teeth one should receive life? And in the same way, that someone could partake of good and evil by chewing what was taken from this tree? If God is represented as walking in the garden in the evening, or Adam as hiding under the tree, I do not think anyone can doubt that these things, by means of a story which did not in fact materially occur, are intended to express certain mysteries in a metaphorical way." ( Origen De Principiis IV, 3, 1)

The Bible itself reveals the fact that the Genesis 6 day creation is not to be taken literally. Whatever the intention of the individual accounts of creation may have been, it is clear from the Bible as a whole that its compilers were not overly concerned with the details of the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis. They incorporated several accounts of creation in the Bible even though no two accounts agree in detail with Genesis 1 or with each other.
Several other accounts are found in poetic form in Psalms, Proverbs, and Job. Genesis 1 says that man was the last living creature created; Genesis 2 says that he was the first. Genesis 1 speaks of the prehistoric waters in purely naturalistic terms and says that God merely commanded them to gather in a single spot so that dry land could appear.
But in poetic passages the ancient waters are personified as rebellious sea monsters which threatened to swamp the dry land, until God subdued them and created the seashore as a boundary which they were prohibited from crossing.

The most notable difference between Genesis and all the other accounts is that none of the others mentions the idea that the world was created in six days. This idea was apparently not considered important enough in the Bible to be repeated in other accounts of creation.

What the Bible as a whole insists on is not these details, but only what the stories have in common. In other words, these stories are regarded as poetic statements of certain basic truths, not as literally scientific accounts of how the universe developed.

Attempting to secure acceptance for it as science is hardly worthwhile, for this would divert attention away from the Bible's religious message to details which from a religious point of view are trivial.


Blessings

[friendly hardline atheist]

Hello Someday,

I had heard before that the literalism wasn't always around, I didn't mean to say it was. Frankly, I don't know too much about that history. Don't tell me it was the work of archbishop Ussher (first half of 1600s) that started it all?

When I mention the bible as source of ignorance it can be distinguished into two flavours: just not providing a good basis for understanding the world around us on the one hand or being hostile to contradicting other means of understanding it on the other. While the latter may only have developed later, I'm still not anything impressed with the bible as a means of understanding the physical world due to the former. But this may not be the basis for a very interesting debate, as you don't seem to think it is either, correct?

greets,
Peter

[Someday]

Friendly

I think you are correct in that the Bible is not meant to be a science text. It does bring a certain understanding, but knowing the mundane physical world and how all of that side of the universe functions is not the understanding it wants to imprint upon the reader. It declares itself over and over again as requiring spiritual discernment to understand it. It addresses our spiritual condition and how to overcome spiritual obstacles.
Even St Augustine, a man I usually vilify as the great inventor of eternal punishment explains how to balance science with the Bible thusly in De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim (The Literal Meaning of Genesis):

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. [1 Timothy 1.7]

I think this is excellent advise from a man writing over 1500 years ago. No one can hardly argue that he was caving in to the pressure of Darwinism. Although I disagree with him theologically, on this point I am in complete agreement.
If what YEC's say about the natural world conflicts with what non-Christians know to be true, then why should they even give 5 seconds of their valuable time to listen to any presentation of the Gospel?

Blessings

[friendly hardline atheist]

Hi Someday,

Originally Posted by Someday

I think this is excellent advise from a man writing over 1500 years ago.s

Prophetic words indeed, given how emberassed plenty of christians are today about YECs.

Why would I ever worry about them and not just ignore them? If their wacky ideas were confined to the inside of their heads, I might not pay much attention. But given their zealous attempts to muck up science and science education (see e.g. the archive of www.ncseweb.org), it doesn't work that way.

Apart from that broad, general consideration, you may also remember my post a little while ago about what I have ever noticed personally about YECs. See the post about a poster announcing an evolution lecture getting graffitied and directions to the lecture hall being ripped away. Or an interesting book on Egyptian history I would not have read if it had been up to the Church. While you are correct to date Protestant fundamentalism to the early 20th century, the literalist anti-knowledge streak was present in christianity well before that. Champollion decoded the hieroglyphs in 1822. The reason the Catholic church tried to suppress the knowledge from coming out was that they had adopted the reasoning from Ussher (himself not Catholic) dating from the first part of the 1600s.

greets,
Peter

[Grace]

Originally Posted by Origen

If God is represented as walking in the garden in the evening, or Adam as hiding under the tree, I do not think anyone can doubt that these things, by means of a story which did not in fact materially occur, are intended to express certain mysteries in a metaphorical way.

Originally Posted by Augustine

....to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

Thanks for the quotes, someday....reminds me of the proverb:
Zeal without knowledge is not good; a person who moves too quickly may go the wrong way.

[The servant]

Originally Posted by Someday

I agree, we should look to history to examine how the early Christians interpreted Genesis. It wasn't widely interpreted literally until the protestants came along

Perhaps a direct quote from an early Christian may shed some truth here?

"What intelligent person will suppose that there was a first, a second and a third day, that there was evening and morning without the existence of the sun and moon and stars? Or that there was a first day without a sky? Who could be so silly as to think that God planted a paradise in Eden in the East the way a human gardener does, and that he made in this garden a visible and palpable tree of life, so that by tasting its fruit with one’s bodily teeth one should receive life? And in the same way, that someone could partake of good and evil by chewing what was taken from this tree? If God is represented as walking in the garden in the evening, or Adam as hiding under the tree, I do not think anyone can doubt that these things, by means of a story which did not in fact materially occur, are intended to express certain mysteries in a metaphorical way." ( Origen De Principiis IV, 3, 1)

The Bible itself reveals the fact that the Genesis 6 day creation is not to be taken literally. Whatever the intention of the individual accounts of creation may have been, it is clear from the Bible as a whole that its compilers were not overly concerned with the details of the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis. They incorporated several accounts of creation in the Bible even though no two accounts agree in detail with Genesis 1 or with each other.
Several other accounts are found in poetic form in Psalms, Proverbs, and Job. Genesis 1 says that man was the last living creature created; Genesis 2 says that he was the first. Genesis 1 speaks of the prehistoric waters in purely naturalistic terms and says that God merely commanded them to gather in a single spot so that dry land could appear.
But in poetic passages the ancient waters are personified as rebellious sea monsters which threatened to swamp the dry land, until God subdued them and created the seashore as a boundary which they were prohibited from crossing.

The most notable difference between Genesis and all the other accounts is that none of the others mentions the idea that the world was created in six days. This idea was apparently not considered important enough in the Bible to be repeated in other accounts of creation.

What the Bible as a whole insists on is not these details, but only what the stories have in common. In other words, these stories are regarded as poetic statements of certain basic truths, not as literally scientific accounts of how the universe developed.

Attempting to secure acceptance for it as science is hardly worthwhile, for this would divert attention away from the Bible's religious message to details which from a religious point of view are trivial.


Blessings

This refers to your thread in "know any good quotes "On the incorrect literal six day creation belief " I have re posted it here at it relates to my next reply to your points and Graces (whom it is also nice to hear from) here, and I do not wish to rephrase my thoughts on the whole but to add to this which contains a foundation to understand where I am coming from in my next text, I hope you understand

Hi Someday
First the referral as above “On the incorrect six day Creation belief” I also call this incorrect as the Creation as refereed to in the Bible, and on the seventh day God rested, to my mind is the truth if you look on it from a spiritual point the way the Bible was written and intended for us to absorb the contents, and man on earth was only mentioned in the Bible where he need be, but many seem to think that most of the references in the Bible are directly related to the earth and its inhabitants, they are not!

As I have mentioned before that everything is formed out of the radiations of God, the reference to the forming in six days in the Bible is correct in the forming closest to God, I believe The Primordial Levels of Creation, the earth as we know it was formed much later, and took many millions of years, as science is allowed to reveal to us.
Much later after the forming of the earth, we were incarnated here for our development and to attain consciousness.

During our incarnations we were often given guidance to follow the path we should follow here, I believe some of this guidance was given us in parables, as I believe was the story of Adam and Eve, the reference to the tree of knowledge I also believe refers to the over cultivation of the intellect, also referred to as the serpent,(intellect) “you can eat of any tree in the Garden but not of the tree of knowledge” The eating of the tree of knowledge is a parable referring to over feeding the front brain with knowledge and in the process it shut of the rear brain, or if not completely it did enough to stunt its activity, to cage the spirit within us, it so we cannot receive guidance from the “Light” which is Gods Will that we do, so we do not become lost, as with the corn that did not bear fruit on stony ground.

Because we had shut ourselves of from God, Jesus the Son of God came to save us from the downward course to perdition, had He not came when He did we would have gone too for into the darkness to have any hope of being saved, Jesus the Son of God anchored the Light here on earth, God is Light!

"For as Adam was told that in the day he ate of the tree he would die, we know that he did not complete a thousand years. We have perceived, moreover, that the expression, 'The day of the Lord is as a thousand years,' is connected with this subject." (Justin Martyr;Dialogue with Trypho, chapter 81)”

I believe that this refers to Adam not attaining to the consciousness through tying himself to the earth through the worship of material things of the earth by the over cultivation of the intellect, which is formed of the dirt and upon death of the earthly body returns to the earth.

The reference to the Thousand years is only speculation to myself, with direct reference to Adam, if you would like my views on this I would be glad to put my points forwards.

I do know that the "A thousand years as one day" refers to the experiencing of the spirit, when the spirit leaves the cumbersome earthly body, its capable of experiencing more faster with out the earthly body than with it, and in the higher realms of Creation for some the experiencing can be a thousand years as one day on the earthly level.

I also have my thoughts on “The Holy Mountain” referred to in the text you put the link in to, but to discuss this here is too Holy, and I have no wish to enlighten or draw ridicule from our atheist that come here, as with this text I have no wish to give them entertainment, to mock and ridicule.
I reserve the right to reply to whom I wish!

There are also many reference to the time after the Judgment, this is a link to one that I was given, In the Light of Truth - A Gripping Vision - A Gripping Vision it is I believe from a catholic priest, although I do no agree with the catholic faith I do believe a lot of people are drawn to God through different religions in their seeking.
I believe that this vision was a vision given to him, of the earth after the judgment, cleansing of the earth as we know it.


Peace and Light to you

The servant

[Someday]

The Servant,

I agree with much of what you are saying here, however, as I usually tend to do, I want to point out the main difference in our beliefs. I do not think intellect plays as high a role as you seem to believe it does in the Fall of Man.

Central to what I believe as spiritual Truth is not the fact that Adam ate from the "Tree of Knowledge", but that Adam and Eve ate fruit from the "Tree of Knowledge of GOOD and EVIL".

This is not just general intellect I interpret from this. This is a very specific knowledge. Remember, when we speak of fruit, we are not talking about a beginning, but an end. The flower is the beginning and the fruit is the result. This particular fruit is eaten, that is, partaken. This is why we are here. We chose a path that subjected us to gaining the knowledge of good and evil. Part of this process is experiencing the good, and experiencing the evil.
It's not a path toward salvation though. It is not a path that can truly lead one back to the Garden. This was made especially apparent through the Laws of Moses. Paul called the law death. God told Adam that eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was death. The Law was the ultimate demonstration of the folly of chasing after salvation through knowledge of right and wrong and trying to avoid evil. That is why Jesus is called the Tree of Life, and the River of Life, and other such things like that. He fulfilled the requirement of the Law, that is, the Knowledge of Good and Evil on a broader scale.

That being said, earthly knowledge and wisdom is useless in spiritual development. It is an obstacle if you allow it to be. But obstacles are part of the fruit we dine on. Spiritual knowledge and wisdom on the other hand is vital to us. It is more important than earthly intellect. Earthly intellect is useful for understanding and functioning in a mundane world. It has a purpose, but that purpose is not spiritual overall. But an intelligent person can be just as spiritual as an unintelligent person. God does not punish intelligence. God is not angry with doctors and scientists and many others who benefit mankind with their intellect. I reject that notion whole heartedly. But intelligence should be seen for what it is. Useful for the natural mundane world we reside in, for natural and mundane purposes. It must be set aside when one is trying to come to the knowledge of spiritual things. Some reject this notion, true. They believe earthly intellect is more important than spiritual intellect, and indeed, in their eyes this is probably true. They are more likely to look at the spiritual person with a skeptical eye, believing us to be unintelligent, irrational and otherwise defective in some way. We who have experienced deep spiritual things look at them in much the same way, as we do each other when we believe our theology superior to that of the fellow theist.

We need to realize there are two kinds of intellect. Both have different purposes. They are perfectly compatible with each other if we wisely separate them in our lives. On Earth, earthly intellect is needed. But in spiritual things, a different kind of intellect is needed. It's what kind of knowledge is more important to us that shapes our lives.

Blessings