Does Evolution and Science draw people away from God?

[Philip]

Neo, I am not attacking YOU. I'm not even exceptionally reactive to your belief in evolution. But I do obviously believe your assertion that much of Scripture is fiction to be a terrible thing. That does indeed bring many questions as to what Basic and accurate info God could provide but supposedly chose not to. Again, by your logic, there is no reason to believe the Bible's assertions that a Jesus was Resurrected or that we must have faith in Him so as to be saved. You are cherry picking what parts of Scripture you want to believe and what parts you don't.

As for confusing my assertion that God allowing the corruption of His Word with copious lies would be unloving and dangerous with Him allowing present and past atrocities is just wrong. The terrible sins of unsaved men are THEIR responsibility and of their own evil hearts. Only God is responsible for His Word, and so if what you assert about much of Scripture being unreliable fiction would mean God is not concerned about the accurate transmission of His Word or of our understanding of what He requires of us - which would lead to much confusion and sin. Truly, we would almost be better off not knowing any of His Word if we couldn't truly know which parts of Scripture were actually His and which parts were just fiction. This would make me question whether being saved is even necessary. The Resurrection? Just more creative writing.

As for the atrocities of man, there will be justice - but that justice is yet to come. And so, by what you are saying, that you don't know which parts of Scripture are true and which are not, then this makes YOU the determiner of what you consider being right or wrong, as what other choice would you have? In the New Testament, Christ confirms the OT. So, do you not also doubt much the NT as well? Some here, whom also believe in evolution, don't dismiss Scripture as being unreliable fiction, but that certain parts are true but allegorical. While I think that's problematic, it's not nearly as dangerous as what you are suggesting. Please don't think I'm doubting your faith in Christ, it's just that I wonder why you think it's important or necessary, as this is a teaching that comes from God's Word, which you assert is unreliable.

BTW, I do know, through scholars using refined literary criticism techniques, and the massive number of copied manuscripts, that we can have high confidence in the accuracy of Scripture's transmission down through the ages. So, using these, we can see where categories of exceptionally minor errors came into the texts, and only a couple of places where their are questions of things being added that were not in the originals. And those minute places impact not one important doctrinal or theological points. So God perfectly preserved what He wanted, in the copies, so as to give us both reasonable and high confidence in the originals. He didn't need to give us perfect, digital copies, as He gave us ways to have confidence that His Word has been preserved. Again, if you question the OT, then you are necessarily questioning the NT.

And IF key portions of scripture are merely allegorical and thus open to a variety of possible meanings, then I'd say those are portions that God doesn't consider crucial for us to accurately understand. I believe this to be true of the issue surrounding the age of the earth - whether young or ancient - it's not a critical understanding, certainly, not to its PURPOSE. But of things like the origin of sin and death entering the world, of why mankind needs a Savior - these are extremely important and foundational to correctly understanding the rest of the Bible. And so why would God give us wild, fairytale-like stories, easily interpreted in a variety of wrongful ways, instead? We could never know what they truly mean and their meanings would be highly subjective and basically worthless for determining God's truths.

[PaulSacramento]

There are a few issues here, BUT the main point of this thread is whether or not evolution and science draws people away from God and, IMO, the answer is NO.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am sure some people use science as a "reason" to no believe in God and those people will find an atheistic viewpoint in ANYTHING scientific BUT the simple fact that there are MANY scientists and many evolutionists that are religious proves that those things are do NOT push people away from God.

[Audie]

It looks to me that its more that religion pushes people away from science than the other way around.

It wont improve my popularity to say that, I say so only because regardless of my nationality I care about the future of the west.

[bippy123]

There are a few issues here, BUT the main point of this thread is whether or not evolution and science draws people away from God and, IMO, the answer is NO.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am sure some people use science as a "reason" to no believe in God and those people will find an atheistic viewpoint in ANYTHING scientific BUT the simple fact that there are MANY scientists and many evolutionists that are religious proves that those things are do NOT push people away from God.

Kenneth miller is one such scientist who believes in both evolution and God . I know as I used to follow his debates when I was a believer in evolution . Heck, out of all my relatives and family I'm the only one who is an ID'st . They still can't believe it because of the way I was obsessed with and defended evolution in the past .

It all depends on how you read genesis . I for instance believe that genesis was purposely vague on questions such as , for example the she of the earth and the universe .
When it was written that the earth and universe were created in 6 days , the word used for days is YOM. YOM can mean a literal 6 day time period or 6 indefinite time periods . Was God deliberately trying to be vage ?
I think so , at least on this issue . Maybe it's his way of saying ""explore and see for yourself , enjoy this journey because your salvation isn't dependent in how old the universe is ""

Anyways , this is my take on this .

[Morny]

Apropos to this discussion is Carl Sagan's response to the 14th Dalai Lama's claim about reincarnation being hard to disprove:

"Plainly the Dalai Lama is right. Religious doctrine that is insulated from disproof has little reason to worry about the advance of science. The grand idea, common to many faiths, of a Creator of the Universe is one such doctrine - difficult alike to demonstrate or to dismiss."

[bippy123]

I'm not gonna have much faith in or be much interested in discussing the intricacies of calculus if, firstly, basic, foundational math can't be explained.

The case for common descent uses only simple reasoning. Organizing organisms by a panoply of biological traits forms only one reasonable nested hierarchy. The leaves (organisms) on the tree (of life), grouped by branch and stem, form the nested hierarchy, which supports the idea of a common ancestor.

Such a simple concept required the genius of Darwin to notice and explain the unmistakable pattern. And 150 more years of analyzing biological traits among vastly different species continues to confirm this objective nested hierarchy. As if that weren't enough, DNA analysis now confirms the same nested hierarchy.

I've no desire to argue over these various opinions that variously declare each school of thought on the specifics of how evolution MIGHT have worked - only to say, such an argument should be very specific to the very beginning of everything that came into existence.

I don't understand. A paraphrasing seems to be: "Ignore evolution, until science has an answer for the ultimate cause."

The problem morny is that what evolutionist biologist represent to the public isn't what the fact say..... Exactly .

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2014/05 ... signs.html

One of Velasco’s themes in the debate was that biological designs fall into a nested hierarchy. The idea is that the common ancestry model predicts and requires such a pattern and that the finding of this hierarchy in biology is an extremely powerful proof text for evolution. But if this were true then evolution would be false by modus tollens, for the actual scientific evidence, as we have discussed many times here, is not so simple. And so we will repeat once again, phylogenetic incongruence is rampant in evolutionary studies. Conflicts exist at all levels of the evolutionary tree and throughout both morphological and molecular traits.

This paper reports on incongruent gene trees in bats. That is one example of many. These incongruences are caused by just about every kind of contradiction possible. Molecular sequences in one or a few species may be out of place amongst similar species. Or sequences in distant species may be strangely similar. As one paper admitted, there is “no known mechanism or function that would account for this level of conservation at the observed evolutionary distances.” Or as another evolutionist admitted, the many examples of nearly identical molecular sequences of totally unrelated animals are “astonishing.”

An even more severe problem is that in many cases no comparison is even possible. The molecular sequence is found in one species but not its neighbors. When this problem first became apparent evolutionists thought it would be resolved as the genomes of more species were decoded. No such luck—the problem just became worse. Not surprisingly evolutionists carefully prefilter their data. As one paper explained, “data are routinely filtered in order to satisfy stringent criteria so as to eliminate the possibility of incongruence.”

Short genes that produce what are known as microRNA also contradict Dawkins’ high claim. In fact one evolutionist, who has studied thousands of microRNA genes, explained that he has not found “a single example that would support the traditional tree.” It is, another evolutionist admitted, “a very serious incongruence.”

Another paper admits that “the more molecular data is analysed, the more difficult it is to interpret straightforwardly the evolutionary histories of those molecules.”

And yet in public presentations of their theory, evolutionists present a very different story. Velasco’s claim is typical. For example, Richard Dawkins explained that gene comparisons “fall in a perfect hierarchy, a perfect family tree.” This statement is so false it isn’t even wrong—it is absurd.

Here are some of the reference articles whose links are placed in hyperlinks throughout the article . The others us can rear about by going directly to the article if your interested.

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/06 ... wrong.html

http://www.biologydirect.com/content/pd ... 0-6-32.pdf


http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/10 ... cycle.html

http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2013/09 ... rgent.html

I've always believed that there is a harmony between science and religion , but at the same time I don't advocate the belief in scientism . Here is an example of this religious view here .

Here is a clear and perfect example here
http://creation.com/amazing-admission-lewontin-quote

Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist (and self-proclaimed Marxist), is certainly one of the world’s leaders in evolutionary biology. He wrote this very revealing comment (the italics were in the original). It illustrates the implicit philosophical bias against Genesis creation—regardless of whether or not the facts support it.

‘Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen.

This is why I don't automatically accept any claim made by a consensus anymore like I used to , without examining the evidence myself away from the materialistic bias that permeates scientific institutions today . My view is one if a cautious trust , simply because I know that science today is controlled in many parts if educational institutions by scientists who have a materialistic bias apriori even before they start examining the evidences . This methodological naturalism is part of their religious views and anyone who doesn't support them is ridiculed and pressured from the highest levels .

[bippy123]

Apropos to this discussion is Carl Sagan's response to the 14th Dalai Lama's claim about reincarnation being hard to disprove:

"Plainly the Dalai Lama is right. Religious doctrine that is insulated from disproof has little reason to worry about the advance of science. The grand idea, common to many faiths, of a Creator of the Universe is one such doctrine - difficult alike to demonstrate or to dismiss."

The problem here morny is that Sagan is using this within the context of methodological naturalism which means that if it can't be analyzed within this paradigm , that it can't be falsified .

I subscribe to what the ancient Greeks called science , which is to gain knowledge . Not only knowledge that can be repeated in a lab setting , but all knowledge Whethet it can be repeated or not .

Many scientists warned about the narrow dogmatic viewpoint if scientism . One such man was atheist sinnologist professor Joseph Needham who was an agnostic/atheist himself .

As you can see from above these scientists like lewintin admitted that they must have a biased for materialism from the beginning . This is not how real science is done , and this is how people in power allow the interoretatiin if the data to come down to us .

I saw an example of this on CNN when professor eugenie Scott astonishingly told the world through cnn that there are no peer reviewed papers on intelligent design , right in front of doctor stephen meyer who himself has peer reviewed papers published in ID.

As doctor frank turek says , science says nothing about science , scientists do.

[RickD]

Bippy,

If you've put half as much effort and study into this topic, as you have the Shroud, I can't wait to see what you're going to say.

You really impress me with your knowledge of the Shroud.

[PaulSacramento]

There are a few issues here, BUT the main point of this thread is whether or not evolution and science draws people away from God and, IMO, the answer is NO.
Now, don't get me wrong, I am sure some people use science as a "reason" to no believe in God and those people will find an atheistic viewpoint in ANYTHING scientific BUT the simple fact that there are MANY scientists and many evolutionists that are religious proves that those things are do NOT push people away from God.

Kenneth miller is one such scientist who believes in both evolution and God . I know as I used to follow his debates when I was a believer in evolution . Heck, out of all my relatives and family I'm the only one who is an ID'st . They still can't believe it because of the way I was obsessed with and defended evolution in the past .

It all depends on how you read genesis . I for instance believe that genesis was purposely vague on questions such as , for example the she of the earth and the universe .
When it was written that the earth and universe were created in 6 days , the word used for days is YOM. YOM can mean a literal 6 day time period or 6 indefinite time periods . Was God deliberately trying to be vage ?
I think so , at least on this issue . Maybe it's his way of saying ""explore and see for yourself , enjoy this journey because your salvation isn't dependent in how old the universe is ""

Anyways , this is my take on this .

There is also NO indication that the 6 days were sequential either, in other words, the 3 rd day came after the 2nd BUT there is no indication of HOW LONG after the second.
There is also the possibility that, as Peter said, "one day is for God like 1000", so the 6 days could have been 6000 years.
The point being that the Genesis text can be read literally and still NOT mean that the world was created in 6 days, IE: 144 hours.
There is even this very interesting view by Gerald Schroeder:

http://geraldschroeder.com/wordpress/?page_id=53

[Philip]

Bip, hope you received my recent message - I'd been meaning to get back with you for quite some time. Looking forward to learning more about why you changed your mind about evolution.

[Storyteller]

Still making my mind up on all of this having recently come to God. I had always gone with evolution, now I'm not so sure.
Is ID Independent Design? As in God, the creator?
How do Neanderthal Man fit in? Dinosaurs?
When (and who) were Adam and Eve?

My take on it all is that these are all details. All we need is faith. I'm sure, when we meet God, it will all become clear. Like bippy says I don't see it as being important to salvation.

[RickD]

Still making my mind up on all of this having recently come to God. I had always gone with evolution, now I'm not so sure.
Is ID Independent Design? As in God, the creator?
How do Neanderthal Man fit in? Dinosaurs?
When (and who) were Adam & Eve?

My take on it all is that these are all details. All we need is faith. I'm sure, when we meet God, it will all become clear. Like bippy says I don't see it as being important to salvation.

Hi Storyteller,

ID is Intelligent Design. In simple terms, ID is:

The theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

And I'm one to agree with you that this topic is something that believers are free to discuss and even disagree about. While one's belief about these issues does have importance on how one understands scripture, how the universe came about, and the age of the earth/universe are not salvation issues.

[Danieltwotwenty]

It looks to me that its more that religion pushes people away from science than the other way around.

It wont improve my popularity to say that, I say so only because regardless of my nationality I care about the future of the west.

I agree with you Audie, maybe it is religion, not the pure form but man's religiousness and the need for a legalistic life style.

Who cares about popularity, my views have never been popular. A friend once said to me "Daniel your views could be classed as heretical" I said "Heretical to who? What the institutional Church" we both had a good laugh.

[Storyteller]

Thanks for that Rick!
My name is Annette:)

are you RickD as in Deem? You're the site owner? Was it you that compiled the main site?
If so, thank you, it's been and is essential to cementing my belief and I'm finding a lot of answers by working through these threads. Bippys stuff on the shroud is filling me with faith and excitement.

There are so many different theories and ideas within belief alone, it's mind boggling. It's fascinating stuff to interpret.

The scientific facts discussed on this site are what drew me in and strengthed my beief, so my answer is No I don't think science and evolution draw people away from God.

ps is there a glosary of terms anywhere?

[Danieltwotwenty]

are you RickD as in Deem? You're the site owner? Was it you that compiled the main site?

No, Rick is not Rich, he is just our resident clown