Progressive creation vs Theistic evolution

[Audie]

What do you mean "previous versions of man"?

Neandethral man I suppose.

I'm working from my head here... but..
We don't really see art and the like until about 50k years.
Some try to push this back as far as possible, based upon beads being found or something places 90-100k years ago, like to when anatomically similar modern man is said to have arrived (~130k years ago). Neand, Erect, are just different unique species. Homo sapien sapien (modern humans) is considered a sub-species.

So it's like like there were previous "versions" of man.
Or that God was trying to get anything right, any more than the diversity found in our species.

Would God need to try to get things right though? Would He ned a pracice run, so to speak? Do you think these humans didnt have souls then?

Can you picture God sitting on His heavenly throne, creating bipedal creatures..."Crap, that one's not right. I thing it needs more oregano."
Then after He created Adam, He said, "I've almost got it!" Then He created woman, and He couldn't do any better!

yeah! Here I am!

[Kurieuo]

We don't really see art and the like until about 50k years.
Some try to push this back as far as possible, based upon beads being found or something places 90-100k years ago, like to when anatomically similar modern man is said to have arrived (~130k years ago). Neand, Erect, are just different unique species. Homo sapien sapien (modern humans) is considered a sub-species.

So it's like like there were previous "versions" of man.
Or that God was trying to get anything right, any more than the diversity found in our species.

Would God need to try to get things right though? Would He ned a pracice run, so to speak? Do you think these humans didnt have souls then?

Where does this idea of "practice run come into the picture"?

Consider this. We have a lot of diverse fish and butterflies.
Did got need a lot of "practice runs" to try get these species right?
The question doesn't really make sense to me. God just created diverse life.

Re: "souls". Behaviour we ascribe to us modern humans is only relatively recent.
It's not even clear that what we call anatomically similar modern man (~130k years ago) possessed the capacity for art, complex tool creation and the like.

Some like Fazale Rana at RTB want modern human behaviour to arise with when we see anatomically modern humans, and so try to dig up evidence to support this.
The evidence seems rather thin and sketchy to me. I'd much rather have our species physically appearing 50-60k years ago.

For me, there seems to be like an "explosion" with modern human behaviour and qualities that we ascribe to soul -- paintings and arts, ornaments, complex tools and the like. So however one paints the story of human origins, this suggests to me humans like us BOTH physically and our level of consciousness are relatively recent (50-60k).

Really, I think the jury is still out on when humanity as we know it today actually arose. And also when characteristics that we'd ascribe to modern human behaviour -- spirituality, creativity, higher-level thinking, etc.

So Adam and Eve are at the start of that explosion? (sorry if these are obvious questions, I am starting again, right at the beginning)
I had always thought thatvwe were descended from neandethral

Well, some like BioLogos believe so (these guys advocate Theistic Evolution). I'd need to track down the article on their site.
That is, we have humans walking around on Earth but not until God adds his image into mankind do we start behaving like who we are today.
From memory, evolution to the author of that article I read only deals with the physical and not immaterial parts of us.

Reasons To Believe (who advocate Progressive Creation via a Day-Age interpretation of Scripture), think it is important that when we have physically modern human beings that they also possess the higher intellect and spirituality that comes with that. So they try to square today's discrepancies in time between physical modern humans and modern human behaviour through arguing human behaviour should be pushed back further.

I'm not sure where I stand. I don't like the timings of everything. I don't believe those who believe in natural evolution do either.
It is interesting that RTB once said the gaps in genealogies found in Scripture, could be pushed back to 50-60k at the latest.
BUT, now they say (in particular Fazale Rana), that 130k is still harmonious with Scripture.
That to me is a stretch. It seems to me their original beliefs failed and now they're shifting the goal posts of their model.
However, I take some comfort from the fact we see spiritual expression more inline with the 50k mark.

Understand, there are gaps in our knowledge. The evidence in reality is quite few and far between.
Personally, I'm just not sure how much hard data is being drawn from. I really don't know what assumptions are being made.
People love to inject assumptions and act like they know what is the truth of the matter all the time. We have big egos.

So at the end of the day, I see that we do have pieces of the picture, but it is more incomplete than complete.
I guess I realistically have to settle with agnosticism here.

Except that I believe God was directly responsible for creating new kinds of life.
And God was involved in the direct creation of humanity. Unless you trivialize Scripture, then that much has to be embraced.

[Kurieuo]

Found the Biologos article. It is called How could humans have evolved and still be created in the “Image of God”?

A relevant portion:

We believe that God created humans in biological continuity with all life on earth, but also as spiritual beings. God established a unique relationship with humanity by endowing us with his image and calling us to an elevated position within the created order. Thus, BioLogos believes that God created humanity using the process of evolution and endowed us with his image. ...

If the image of God refers to our spiritual capacities, God could still have used the natural process of evolution to create our bodies and human abilities. God could have used a miraculous process to create our spiritual capacities, or used some combination of natural processes and divine revelation to develop these capacities. Either way, God is the creator of our whole selves, including both our physical and spiritual aspects.

[Proinsias]

Thanks Jac, I appreciate the reply, the thoughts and the prayer.

but...... I flat out disagree with you that God's existence can be proven as a matter of reason. I may be wrong or not educated in such matters but the arguments put forward by Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Anslem and others are not in my opinion reasonable proofs of God, they are reasonable arguments for God. To make an appeal to authority I don't have to hunt hard for philosophers or religious thinkers who agree with me. As we disagree on most I don't imagine a little extra will matter much This is not to say that there is not merit in such methods, many people love a well reasoned argument to give their worldview a solid grounding and every religion has reasoning to scratch that itch.
Much of the appeal and influence of Chrstianity, and most religions, in my opinion is that these things really do not matter, the wise theologian is not 'doing it better' than the washer women who has never opened a bible in her life and trusts in Christ. I'm of the opinion that when we allow our prayer or practice to go beyond taking time out and to become more sysnonymous with our daily life the world is a more pleasant place to be in almost immediately.....some like making grand and profound arguments of astonishing intellectual complexity and others clean as cleanliness is next to Godliness...... the lack of which is one of the more immediate causes of suffering, death and misery on the planet. On a practical level my wife would much rather I was cleaning the rabbits or the lavvy pan than sitting in the attic drinking tea and "arguing with Christians again on that computer" or lying around reading the history of medieval philosphy by Emile Brehier.

Almost every worldview I've come across at some point reasons towards something akin to the prime mover/unmoved mover/sustainer/brahman/God/dao/the mother goddess/aether/force by various means usually within the language of the culture around them, that is to say in context. The Jains illustrate this point better than I could with the idea of Syādvāda and the dogmatic fallacy.

I flinch when you contrast reason against 'mere faith'. If Christianity does what it says on the tin 'mere faith' brings eternal life with God, reasoning does not as many find it reasonable to reject Christianity and most of those who reason their way to God end up all poking holes in each others reasoning. The beginners mind is an important concept in Zen and seeks to avoid getting bogged down in abstract reasoning and internal commentary, the child often sees with more clarity than the wise and learned scholar.

I'll stick the book on the mental list, in what seems a similar vein I found Harold Schweizer's On Waiting of immense help a few years back when spending a little too much time around hospitals.

*I'm attempting to learn to spell again after becoming a little to dependent on spellcheckers for the last decade or so, recent and upcoming posts may be dotted with more erorrs than usual.

[Kurieuo]

Much of the appeal and influence of Chrstianity, and most religions, in my opinion is that these things really do not matter, the wise theologian is not 'doing it better' than the washer women who has never opened a bible in her life and trusts in Christ. I'm of the opinion that when we allow our prayer or practice to go beyond taking time out and to become more sysnonymous with our daily life the world is a more pleasant place to be in almost immediately.....some like making grand and profound arguments of astonishing intellectual complexity and others clean as cleanliness is next to Godliness...... the lack of which is one of the more immediate causes of suffering, death and misery on the planet. On a practical level my wife would much rather I was cleaning the rabbits or the lavvy pan than sitting in the attic drinking tea and "arguing with Christians again on that computer" or lying around reading the history of medieval philosphy by Emile Brehier.

Well you know what you can tell your wife?
Say, "look Martha... err, I mean honey..." and then quote to her Jesus' words found in Luke 10:38-42:

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!" "Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

Just don't expect any lovin for a while after.

[Proinsias]

Luke to the rescue..........that advice should really be accompanied by the offer of a couch for a night or two

[Kurieuo]

Luke to the rescue..........that advice should really be accompanied by the offer of a couch for a night or two

Then you'll be able to finish reading your medieval philosophy.

[Proinsias]

Makes me think of "If Jesus Came to Your House"

If Jesus came to my house....he'd be promptly put in his place primary teacher style

[Jac3510]

Obviously you don't think God's existence can be proven. If you did, you would be at a minimum a classical theist and more likely a Christian. But I would caution you to be careful to distinguish between the claims, "God's existence cannot be proven" and "God's existence has not been proven." We'd have to have a serious discussion about Thomas' five ways (for example) to really flesh that out, which is something I don't think we've ever done. But all of that is rather far removed from the original point I was making.

Again, I claimed that the existence of God can be proven, not merely felt, that it is an article of reason, not of faith. You can claim at this point that God's existence has not been proven, and while I would disagree with that, I would (in this thread) ignore it as it doesn't go to the point I was making. Or you can make the stronger claim that God's existence cannot be proven, and in that case, you have to put forward an argument to support you claim. Just disagreeing with Thomas (or whomever) doesn't suffice.

As an aside and to your appeal to authority, I would just add that most critics of Aquinas I have read actually fail to understand his argument, and that demonstrably so. It would be too easy to point out that Dawkins is an idiot. But the same can be demonstrated when considering Lawhead, Valasquez, W. T. Jones, Krueger, Colin Brown, and even the notables Russell and Hick. So feel free to appeal to authority. I know a thing or two about those authority and how philosophy is studied in academic settings. And the best part, to me, that shows the utter bankruptcy of the claim in this particular case is that Thomas was just refining Aristotle. Everyone knows Aristotle, right? That's where you would be wrong. These professionals have a laughable understanding of the man. I've spent countless hours talking to professional philosophers (including Christian philosophers like William Lane Craig) and correcting them on their Aristotle and Aquinas. It's really embarrassing. But what do you expect? These schools think they are impressive because they read each other. Their misunderstandings are literally laughable--as in, those who actually study Aristotle and Aquinas in Greek and Latin (hello!) literally laugh at those so-called professionals. So, please, do appeal to them!

So I just go back to my prayers. Perhaps in your studies you will take the time to take Aristotle and Aquinas seriously. If you do, you'll be surprised to find that those men knew far more than their critics do, and that just because you can spout the four causes and give a basic exposition of hylomorphism, it doesn't qualify you to say you understand Aristotle's Prime Mover argument, much less to be able to assess it. But that's all your journey. When you want to get around to the real stuff, you will. Shy of that, maybe God will just miraculously reveal Himself to you . . . who knows?

[Kurieuo]

Makes me think of "If Jesus Came to Your House"

If Jesus came to my house....he'd be promptly put in his place primary teacher style

I can just picture the look on your wife's face if you starting singing that to her.

[Proinsias]

I imagine it would be pretty easy for Dawkins to point out your worldviews are idiotic, he's made a career out of it.

I did swither over 'has not' and 'can not' when typing but felt the latter was more appropriate. On one level it's as simple as me not finding a proof that is convincing but I'm not just disagreeing with Thomas & Aristotle, I'm suggesting that many of the great religious traditions of the world have spent thousands of years carefully and methodically developing methods specifically to counteract this type of thinking and to point out where it leads. Lao Tze, Dogen, the Buddha, Mahavira &Krisna highlight the issues with far more piercing clarity and simple methods than those within the western intellectual tradition arguing & trying to deconstruct these arguments in the vein of J.L mackie or WLC. If professional theolgians and philosophers can't cope with this stuff, I'm screwed. I've long been a fan of Peter Singer which I'm sure will delight you and found his criticisms of Aristotle & Aquinas really chimned in with all the alarm bells I had ringing when making my way through Feser's Aquinas and your Divine Simplicity.

I accept that Aristotle and Aquinas knew far more than most and were men of supreme intellect. My objection is not so much to the nuts and bolts, of which I have many, of the particular arguments for unmoved movers but more towards serious category errors in overarching worldviews. Feser's Beginners Aquinas book took me about two months to read with more far more time spent reading sources, commentaries and background than on the book itself. I expected to come away with respect for a beautiful metaphysical synthesis of Aristotle & Christianity and it turned out to be a journey of profound disagreement with Feser's worldview in almost every respect, maybe one day it'll click but I can see me accepting Jesus long before I could bring myself to come to terms with that book. Emile Breheir's writings on Aquinas in his history of phlosophy strike me as reasonble, I do enjoy Chesterton's writing so I'm gonna give his book on Aquinas a read. Reading Shunryu Suzuki's commentaries on the Sandokai again afterwards took me a few hours for a similar sized book and was like a draught of fresh mountain water after the painful plodding though the weird world of Feser. That's not to say I don't appreciate a great deal of wisdom, genius and beauty in Aristotle & Aquinas but it seems to me the genius was accompanied by a formidable ego which the other half of the world outwith the European and Abrahamic framework are very well versed in.

How on earth can it be 3am.......I'm off to bed and hoping the little guy is in the mood for a long lie.

[abelcainsbrother]

Found the Biologos article. It is called How could humans have evolved and still be created in the “Image of God”?

A relevant portion:

We believe that God created humans in biological continuity with all life on earth, but also as spiritual beings. God established a unique relationship with humanity by endowing us with his image and calling us to an elevated position within the created order. Thus, BioLogos believes that God created humanity using the process of evolution and endowed us with his image. ...

If the image of God refers to our spiritual capacities, God could still have used the natural process of evolution to create our bodies and human abilities. God could have used a miraculous process to create our spiritual capacities, or used some combination of natural processes and divine revelation to develop these capacities. Either way, God is the creator of our whole selves, including both our physical and spiritual aspects.

I think some important things need to be pointed out first off are we going to look at the evidence and believe life evolves and uniformitarianism? And if so why? Based on what evidence do we believe life evolves and that all things just go on as they always have from the beginning?

Now I know science went with uniformitarianism because of the theory of evolution.Now uniformitarianism goes all the way back to Greece and their philosophies but we must ask our selves is this really what the evidence in the earth tells us? Because a strong case could be made that it shows only catastraphism with mass death and exctinction just looking at the evidence itself.

Keep in mind that primates were living in trees and I see no reason to believe the hominids had souls like a man does,it could be debatable if neanderthals had a soul,but only when God created Adam did man then have a soul and this is why religion,art,music,language,etc does not show up until man shows up in the fossil record.

But there is more to consider from a biblical perspective and what caused Lucifer to sin and rebel against God? What did Lucifer do in his sin? Was it just he wanted to be the most high god or did he actually try to be the most high God? These are important questions to consider.If Lucifer wanted to be God wouldn't he want to show he could create life like God can? Wouldn't he want to have power and rule over the life he created? I think it is very possible based on the evidence in the earth.

So it comes down to how we interpret the evidence in the earth and who is more right based on the evidence in the earth and the fossils and what we know.This is why I posted this link and I think it needs to be considered.
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/pu/pro ... e148e.html

[abelcainsbrother]

Does it not bother you that people go forth and represent your faith with gibberish, the product of willful ignorance?

Yes, yes it does, very, very much.
It also bothers me when those that share my faith make it look bad by appearing to be "anti-science".

Not every one understand evolution 100%, not every one that does agrees with it 100%, even some biologist disagree with evolution by natural selection ( though not evolution per say).
What I don't like is when those that do NOT understand it, SAY they do and then say there is no evidence of it.
You can disagree with the conclusion of the evidence, BUT you can't say there isn't any because if you do, it simply shows you have NOT understood it at all.

I hope this is not reffering to me because my point has never been there is no evidence for evolution,my point always has and still is that evolution represents this idea life evolves through reproduction,adaptation,evolution,natural selection,micro evolution and macroevolution.

Yet when we actually look at the evidence for evolution like butterflies which I brought up,it is only showing reproduction,not what the theory of evolution represents in society,now if people want to assume them butterflies evolved? They can but all they have demonstrated is reproduction and other evidence shows adaptation as evidence life evolves like viruses but again not what the theory of evolution represents.This makes evolution a faith based belief regardless of how well it is accepted and promoted.This is why I reject evolution and TE.I would accept TE if I there was convincing evidence and I continue to look and examine evidence,when I can,but I see no reason why it makes us dumb scientifically if we reject evolution.

[Storyteller]

We don't really see art and the like until about 50k years.
Some try to push this back as far as possible, based upon beads being found or something places 90-100k years ago, like to when anatomically similar modern man is said to have arrived (~130k years ago). Neand, Erect, are just different unique species. Homo sapien sapien (modern humans) is considered a sub-species.

So it's like like there were previous "versions" of man.
Or that God was trying to get anything right, any more than the diversity found in our species.

Would God need to try to get things right though? Would He ned a pracice run, so to speak? Do you think these humans didnt have souls then?

Where does this idea of "practice run come into the picture"?

Consider this. We have a lot of diverse fish and butterflies.
Did got need a lot of "practice runs" to try get these species right?
The question doesn't really make sense to me. God just created diverse life.

Re: "souls". Behaviour we ascribe to us modern humans is only relatively recent.
It's not even clear that what we call anatomically similar modern man (~130k years ago) possessed the capacity for art, complex tool creation and the like.

Some like Fazale Rana at RTB want modern human behaviour to arise with when we see anatomically modern humans, and so try to dig up evidence to support this.
The evidence seems rather thin and sketchy to me. I'd much rather have our species physically appearing 50-60k years ago.

For me, there seems to be like an "explosion" with modern human behaviour and qualities that we ascribe to soul -- paintings and arts, ornaments, complex tools and the like. So however one paints the story of human origins, this suggests to me humans like us BOTH physically and our level of consciousness are relatively recent (50-60k).

Really, I think the jury is still out on when humanity as we know it today actually arose. And also when characteristics that we'd ascribe to modern human behaviour -- spirituality, creativity, higher-level thinking, etc.

So Adam and Eve are at the start of that explosion? (sorry if these are obvious questions, I am starting again, right at the beginning)
I had always thought thatvwe were descended from neandethral

Well, some like BioLogos believe so (these guys advocate Theistic Evolution). I'd need to track down the article on their site.
That is, we have humans walking around on Earth but not until God adds his image into mankind do we start behaving like who we are today.
From memory, evolution to the author of that article I read only deals with the physical and not immaterial parts of us.

Reasons To Believe (who advocate Progressive Creation via a Day-Age interpretation of Scripture), think it is important that when we have physically modern human beings that they also possess the higher intellect and spirituality that comes with that. So they try to square today's discrepancies in time between physical modern humans and modern human behaviour through arguing human behaviour should be pushed back further.

I'm not sure where I stand. I don't like the timings of everything. I don't believe those who believe in natural evolution do either.
It is interesting that RTB once said the gaps in genealogies found in Scripture, could be pushed back to 50-60k at the latest.
BUT, now they say (in particular Fazale Rana), that 130k is still harmonious with Scripture.
That to me is a stretch. It seems to me their original beliefs failed and now they're shifting the goal posts of their model.
However, I take some comfort from the fact we see spiritual expression more inline with the 50k mark.

Understand, there are gaps in our knowledge. The evidence in reality is quite few and far between.
Personally, I'm just not sure how much hard data is being drawn from. I really don't know what assumptions are being made.
People love to inject assumptions and act like they know what is the truth of the matter all the time. We have big egos.

So at the end of the day, I see that we do have pieces of the picture, but it is more incomplete than complete.
I guess I realistically have to settle with agnosticism here.

Except that I believe God was directly responsible for creating new kinds of life.
And God was involved in the direct creation of humanity. Unless you trivialize Scripture, then that much has to be embraced.

I`ve always disliked jigsaw puzzles I can get the edges alright but always fail in filling in the middle!

I agree God was/is directly responsible for creating new kinds of life and in the direct creation of humanity. That`s where it stops though. I guess I am drawn more to Progressive Creation at the moment so for now, I shall run with that.

Thanks K

(And everyone else who has helped me sort through my thoughts)