Is the Theory of Evolution Harmless to Religion?

[Scuba Pete]

There are two concepts within the framework of the doctrine of "original sin". One is the origin of sin... and I do not see the two as incompatible. Sentience being the main qualifier for being "human". The second, being the irreversible tainting of mankind, has no bearing on evolution at all.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

... the irreversible tainting of mankind, has no bearing on evolution at all.

Really?

Gen 3:16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your labor pains; with pain you will give birth to children.

The pain in child birth is caused by two conflicting evolutionary needs. Bipedalism requires that the legs be close enough together so that the person can walk without a waddle. But this causes the pelvic opening to be small. Intelligence requires large brains and thus large cranial sizes. These two conflicting features lead to the tight fit of the infant through the birth canal.

- see The Evolution of Human Birth

So, NetDoc, is the pain in childbirth the consequence of "two conflicting evolutionary needs", or of Eve eating some forbidden fruit?

 

[Yerda]

I do wish you two would behave...

As far as I see, if you interpret the bible literally as Deut. said you have to dismiss evolution at least to an extent. The chronological order of creation disagrees with the findings of science, and of course, special creation completely violates the theory of evolution.

Most of religious stuff seems to go beyond the scope of evolution and any other science though. Souls and gods and demons and such.

 

[Sunstone]

**MOD POST**

If someone wants to put someone else on their ignore list, please don't go out of your way to foil their desire to ignore that someone. You are not benefitting anyone by doing so.

 

[Cynic]

Oh, is that what my thingy's for......................and all these years............

That and so men could primitively establish a social hierarchy.

*Who will lead us?*

*Wait, me know. Whoever have bigger junk*

*Ahhh...* Everyone nods their head with aspiration.

:areyoucra:areyoucra:areyoucra

 

[Quiddity]

Really?

So, NetDoc, is the pain in childbirth the consequence of "two conflicting evolutionary needs", or of Eve eating some forbidden fruit?

Why not both?

~Victor

 

[mr.guy]

That and so men could primitively establish a social hierarchy.
*Who will lead us?*
*Wait, me know. Whoever have bigger junk*
*Ahhh...* Everyone nods their head with aspiration.

How arrogantly simplistic. You completely glossed over the importance of pissing contests.

 

[Maranda Lombardo]

Why does creationism and evolution HAVE to be mutually exclusive? I personally take most things in the bible as fable/stories/mythology, whatever you want to call it, just learn from it! However, I too was not there when the recordings were written or voices heard so I don't know the details such as was a day then the same length of time as a day is in modern times? What if 7 days really took 7 millenniums and the changing/evolution part was just conveniently left out of the written story?

 

[angellous_evangellous]

In the apartment above mine lives a dog. Everyday, the postman comes and the dog everyday barks at the postman. This has been going on for years. But the dog has never learned that the postman is harmless.

It occured to me today that some of the people who oppose the theory of evolution on religious grounds might have something in common with that dog. That is, they might never have learned that evolution is harmless to their religion. Still, they "bark" at it.

But is this true? Is the theory of evolution harmless to religion? Or, does it really undermine religion, as so many people think? What do you think? And if you think it does undermine religion, precisely why does it undermine religion?

It really depends on the religion. If your religion simply dictates something that goes against science, then you are at a cross-roads

Christians (according to their traditional creeds), however, believe that God is the divine Creator. Being Such, God cannot be discovered by science, but is revealed in theology. The two disciplines of science and theology shall never meet, so they cannot possibly be a threat to eachother.

 

[Nick Soapdish]

Precisely. If one wishes to argue that no mere human is capable of determining what does, and what does not, constitute intelligence on the part of God (a position with which I fully agree, by the way), then no mere human has the right to claim Intelligent Design.

Hey, that is what I said. So NetDoc, you and I are all in agreement then afterall. Wait, something must be wrong.

Intelligent Design is explicitly teleological and counterposed to natural selection.

If I understand your position, you are saying that the belief that evolution is a miracle process (i.e. one that requires supernatural agency) undermines a principle assumption that goes into science--that is that we can know the cause of an effect.

However, I look at it a bit differently. Science is, among other things, a pursuit of better understanding the barrier of what we can and can't know.

 

[Smoke]

Obviously, evolution strikes at the heart of some religions -- especially fundamentalist religions. Otherwise, why would religious people devote so much time and energy to fruitless attempts to disprove the facts?

Of course, there are a lot of religions out there, and not all of them require their adherents to believe things that are manifestly false, or to deny things that are manifestly true. I can't quite account for the popularity of those that do.

 

[Smoke]

I believe the escalation of the topic in recent years is reactionary by many on the religious side. They feel threatened by the agnostic skepticism that dominates academia and the general attitude that you must be dumb if you believe in God.

The reactionary extremism of religious people is the primary reason why some people think you must be stupid if you believe in God.

 

[James the Persian]

The reactionary extremism of religious people is the primary reason why some people think you must be stupid if you believe in God.

But rejecting the idea of God simply on the basis that some religious people are reactive extremists merely shows that the rejecters are as intellectually challenged as the believers they label stupid. The equivalent would be if I were to reject all biological knowledge purely because some biologists, such as Dawkins, are rabidly atheistic and anti-religious bigots. Condemning the beliefs on the basis of the flaws found in some believers is, frankly, intellectually untenable.

As far as evolution is concerned, it is no threat whatsoever to my religion unless it is taken to the extremes of the Dawkins camp, just as Christianity is no threat whatsoever to science unless it is taken to the extremes of the irrational extreme fundamentalists. So long as scientists confine their theories to the material and theologians to the spiritual, there is no conflict.

James

 

[michel]

That and so men could primitively establish a social hierarchy.

*Who will lead us?*

*Wait, me know. Whoever have bigger junk*

*Ahhh...* Everyone nods their head with aspiration.

Ah, really, is that why I always felt at the botom of the social scale ?.....I always wondered...

Is the theory of evolution compatible with the notion of original sin? If so, how? If not, how not?

Interesting thought........

I must admit that if ever I were to be 'miffed' with God, I would probably bring up the unfairness of the way he designed women; such a drastic and horrendous punishment!..........I never thought that was fair........Oh, here I go again, looking for fairness in life.........



Oh, and Sunstone, I think you are 'barking' up the wrong tree with your example of the dog upstairs; that is just conditioning..........

 

[Nehustan]

I think if you read the Genesis story 'literally' and without fully understanding possible scientific things revealed within it, then Evolution is at odds with creationism. This of course does not mean that creation is at odds with science, merely what people understand as the creation story.

Microevolution may be observed under 'laboratory' conditions i.e. colouration of moths, and so the adaptation of creatures to their environment at this level is proved beyond any doubt. The argument is that although at the micro level it is observable does not mean that major changes in the development of species, macroevolution, occurs, and that the creatures placed under the care of Adam, and indeed Adam himself, were created Archetypes.

I think the crucial thing in this debate is time. Our perception and limitation by it, and God's freedom from it. If this is understood the time it took to 'mould' Adam could have been an age.

 

[michel]

JHi Maranda Lombardo'

Welcome to Religious Forums!

As I saw this was your first post here, I thought I would take the opportunity to welcome you as a new member; as such, you might like to post an introduction of yourself on:-
Are you new to ReligiousForums.com? , and please feel free to ask questions, if you have any.You might also want to check out our article with links for our newer members; there is also a link to the forum rules which you ought to look at.

Have fun, and I look forwards to seeing you around.

Lovely name, BTW; I was trying to guess where it originated. Italy perhaps ?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

If I understand your position, ...

This is getting tiresome. Reread post # 40.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

From Talk.Origins

Evolution is a Fact and a Theory​

Since Darwin's time, massive additional evidence has accumulated supporting the fact of evolution--that all living organisms present on earth today have arisen from earlier forms in the course of earth's long history. Indeed, all of modern biology is an affirmation of this relatedness of the many species of living things and of their gradual divergence from one another over the course of time. Since the publication of The Origin of Species, the important question, scientifically speaking, about evolution has not been whether it has taken place. That is no longer an issue among the vast majority of modern biologists. Today, the central and still fascinating questions for biologists concern the mechanisms by which evolution occurs.

- Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology 5th ed. 1989, Worth Publishers, p. 972

A few words need to be said about the "theory of evolution," which most people take to mean the proposition that organisms have evolved from common ancestors. In everyday speech, "theory" often means a hypothesis or even a mere speculation. But in science, "theory" means "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed." as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. The theory of evolution is a body of interconnected statements about natural selection and the other processes that are thought to cause evolution, just as the atomic theory of chemistry and the Newtonian theory of mechanics are bodies of statements that describe causes of chemical and physical phenomena. In contrast, the statement that organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors--the historical reality of evolution--is not a theory. It is a fact, as fully as the fact of the earth's revolution about the sun. Like the heliocentric solar system, evolution began as a hypothesis, and achieved "facthood" as the evidence in its favor became so strong that no knowledgeable and unbiased person could deny its reality. No biologist today would think of submitting a paper entitled "New evidence for evolution;" it simply has not been an issue for a century.

- Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed., 1986, Sinauer Associates, p. 15​

Bottom line: anyone who wishes to reinterpret Genesis 1 & 2 such that these verses can coexist with the fact of evolution is encouraged to do so.

 

[Sunstone]

Given that evolution is a fact, is it more harmful to religion to deny it, than it is for religion to accept it and try to work around it?

Another way of putting this: Does the denial of the plain fact of evoltution discredit a religion? If a religion denies evoltution, is it still believable in other respects, or does the denial of evolution cast doubt on the religions other claims to truth? If you can't trust a religion about something as evident as evolution, can you trust that religion about anything?

 

[Quiddity]

If you can't trust a religion about something as evident as evolution, can you trust that religion about anything?

I think you answered your own question Sunstone with:

If a religion denies evoltution, is it still believable in other respects

But then again you don't need evolution to debunk the Bible's credibility. Heretics have been doing it for years by bringing up apparent contradictions or interpreting as they wish without even hesitating to ask what the Church has understood it to mean.