Evidence for God from Science

Ivellious wrote:Someone (a Christian) told me recently that progressive creationism didn't make sense to her in a biblical sense because it implies that God continued to create long after the Bible said He did...By that I guess she meant that the Bible said God created (out of nothing) life, and progressive creationism implies that God continuously created new things out of nothing for billions of years. By comparison, theistic evolution does not have this issue because, while God may have been continuously intervening via evolution, there was no more creation after the initial introduction of life.

I have no idea whether this is biblically accurate or relevant, but I figured I would post it, for whatever it's worth.

Danieltwotwenty wrote:Thanks Ivell, I never thought about it like that before. Interesting ............... 1000 posts

Canuckster1127 wrote:Progressive Creationism tends to see the creation of man in about the same time frame af 6 - 10 thousand years that YEC does while Theistic evolution effectively accepts whatever the current view is within Naturalistic Evolutionary views and sees the appearance of modern man roughly 50 thousand years ago, without a literal Adam and Eve or Noahic flood.

Canuckster1127 wrote:Progressive Creationism tends to see the creation of man in about the same time frame af 6 - 10 thousand years that YEC does while Theistic evolution effectively accepts whatever the current view is within Naturalistic Evolutionary views and sees the appearance of modern man roughly 50 thousand years ago, without a literal Adam and Eve or Noahic flood.

Genetic, linguistic and pathogen studies support a historical Adam and Eve. This research indicates that humanity arose 1) recently (within the last hundred thousand years or so), 2) at a single location (close to where Bible scholars place the Garden of Eden), and 3) from a small population, arguably as small as a single pair. Much scientific work remains to be done toward refining details, but ample evidence supports the historic Christian idea that all humanity descended from two historical persons, Adam and Eve.

Age of humanityOther than incomplete genealogies, there are other measures of the age of humanity found in the Bible. First, the Bible says that the Lord made a covenant and commanded his law to 1,000 generations:

•Remember His covenant forever, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations, (1 Chronicles 16:15)
•He has remembered His covenant forever, The word which He commanded to a thousand generations, (Psalm 105:8)
•but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:6)
•but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. (Deuteronomy 5:10)
•Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands. (Deuteronomy 7:9)
Unless those generations are only 6 years long, these verses indicate that humanity has been around much longer than 6,000 years. In most instances, a biblical generation is ~40 years long,14 meaning that human beings have been around for at least 40,000 years.

Another, less accurate way to look at the age of humanity is to compare an early biblical event with earth's natural history. One example is the person Peleg, of whom it is said "for in his days the earth was divided..." (Genesis 10:25) This dividing of the earth was likely a result of the removal of land bridges at the end of the last interglacial period, about 12,000 years ago. During this time, seal levels rose several hundred feet as continental ice sheets melted and flowed into the oceans. Assuming the biblical genealogies were complete, we could calculate that Peleg lived ~4,000 years ago. However, since the dividing of the earth really occurred 12,000 years ago, one can determine that the genealogies represent only one third of the actual generations (12,000 ÷ 4,000). This would place the beginning of humanity at ~24,000 years ago, assuming the missing genealogies are missing at the same rate throughout human history. Since it would seem likely that more of the earlier genealogies are missing, the estimate is likely low, probably being more in line with the biblical 40,000 years.

From a scientific standpoint, I would place the creation of Adam as the first modern human (Homo sapiens sapiens), corresponding with the explosion of sophisticated tool making, art, and religious worship in Europe, about 50,000 years ago.15 I do not believe that Adam was a Neanderthal, Homo erectus, or other hominid species found in the fossil record, but a fully modern, spiritual human being.

Theistic evolution avoids the problem of conflict between the Bible and science.

jlay wrote:

Theistic evolution avoids the problem of conflict between the Bible and science.

Such as the resurrection and the miracles of Jesus????
Please do tell.

narnia4 wrote:[I believe this is probably referring to what's seen as scientific evidence for an old earth and against a young earth.

Since 1950, the Roman Catholic Church has asserted that a belief in the natural evolution of biological diversity (including the human body) through material processes is not inconsistent with Church teaching. The Church explicitly endorses neither an evolutionary nor a special creation view of the origin of biological diversity.
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Pope Benedict the XVI made statements that some interpret as supporting the "Intelligent Design" movement in the United States. The Pope said that behind the natural world there is "the creative reason, the reason that has created everything, that has created this intelligent project." This statement largely has been interpreted as reiterating the position of the Church concerning the non-randomness of creation and the imanence of God in the world. Jesuit Father George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory said that "[t]he pope was not alluding in any way to intelligent design as it is understood in the United States,.... The pope was talking about God's love for his creation. God is in love with his creation, he nurses it along, he accompanies it. But that doesn't make God a 'designer.' That belittles God, it makes him paltry[.]"

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When I began teaching at Regis, I was occasionally shocked when a student would ask me why I was teaching evolution at a Catholic school. We also have received inquiries in the Biology Department from parents of prospective students about the role of evolution in our Regis Biology curriculum. The fact that people were not sure about the position of Roman Catholicism towards biological evolution or that people believed that Catholicism and evolutionary explanations for biological diversity were incompatible was of concern and interest to me. I personally never thought that there was any conflict between evolutionary explanations of change in the natural world and Roman Catholic Christianity. As someone who attended Catholic grade school and high school, I was taught evolution in science classes and never encountered anyone who considered biological evolution to be "un-Catholic" (although I knew that some Protestant Christians thought that evolutionary explanations are not compatible with their versions of Christianity). Because I continue to get these questions I researched the issue further and decided to put together this page as a resource for students at Regis. I am not trying to convince anyone of a particular position. Rather I am attempting to provide general information to better answer these questions.
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Danieltwotwenty wrote:

Ivellious wrote:Someone (a Christian) told me recently that progressive creationism didn't make sense to her in a biblical sense because it implies that God continued to create long after the Bible said He did...By that I guess she meant that the Bible said God created (out of nothing) life, and progressive creationism implies that God continuously created new things out of nothing for billions of years. By comparison, theistic evolution does not have this issue because, while God may have been continuously intervening via evolution, there was no more creation after the initial introduction of life.

I have no idea whether this is biblically accurate or relevant, but I figured I would post it, for whatever it's worth.

Thanks Ivell, I never thought about it like that before. Interesting ............... 1000 posts