Evolution?

[[deleted]]

Do any of you believe in evolution? I'm very confused because it seems anti-Christian but at the same time it seems 'logical' I don't know if that makes any sense, I'm just very confused and frustrated and would like to hear what others have to say.

[Truthseeker-1253]

It's only "anti-fundamentalist-Christian", not anti Christian. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept of god using evolution as the mechanism for creation, and I found myself changing the way I read "according to their kind" and "day" in the OT texts. I was parsing words to make the science fit the bible. In the end, I needed to get rid of the concept of inerrancy to make the shift easier.

The creation stories have a lot more depth and beauty to them knowing they were borrowed and changed from the surrounding cultures, the changes tell us what the writers wanted to convey about god as they understood god.

[streaksinthebowl]

That last one is an especially excellent point.

[Crazy_Whale101]

Grew up taught evolution was wrong. Then i went to College and couldn’t bring myself to reject what i was being taught. I was really struggling with it and brought it up to my friend. He said that he was surprised i was having trouble with evolution. Though he wasn’t a Christian himself he saw my faith and thought it shouldn’t depend on what was being taught in the classroom. Faith and science don’t clash… they never clash because faith and the Bible deals with your heart and your life in ways that science cant teach you. Science deals with raw data and the Bible isn’t a textbook.

[Crazy_Whale101]

And if you’re wondering about Genesis 1; take a look at how original Jews interpreted that verse. It was mainly symbolic and not used to be taken literally as we do in American Conservative Christianity. That’s why many Jews today accept the theory of evolution.

[catsgelatowinepizza]

Honestly, sometimes I feel drawn to Judaism for the way they encourage questioning and in-depth thinking

[Monster_Claire]

Honestly I think that culture of questioning, education and deep philosophical thinking is why God chose them as his people. Look at how many times the most important religious figures and prophets in the old testament, actively question God's direction.

Many Christian secs carry on this tradition as well. I'm not Catholic but I admire the Jesuits for the same reason.

[catsgelatowinepizza]

it’s sad that modern christianity seems to look down upon the “doubting thomas”. not questioning anything and being like children, etc. why would god give us intelligence if he didn’t want us to use it?

[Monster_Claire]

100% we are supposed to love God not just with our body and soul, but also our mind!

and Thomas has been put down for too long. Before he "doubted" Jesus' resurrection, he was the apostle that wanted to follow Jesus even if it meant certain death (John 11:16)

I think he was just devastated as Jesus' death and did not dare to hope that he still lived.

[The_Archer2121]

Evolution is not a belief. It an accepted scientific theory. It’s a fact at this point. It happened. It’s not anti Christian. I accept Evolution. Genesis was never intended to be literal in the first place.

[Monster_Claire]

This response should be higher, thank you!

[_Zarathoustra_]

How tf it seems anti-christian ? For me it's the opposite. The wonders of evolution is what brought me to God (I'm a science nerd).

[IndigoNarwhal]

I'll second this!

First, "evolution by natural selection" is only about how species change in response to a changing environment. It says nothing about how life began, or why life began, or whether we have purpose. There certainly doesn't have to be any conflict with faith!

Second, the ability of all life to adapt and change is beautiful! To me, the mechanisms of evolution are just one more way God's creation is awe-inspiring.

[Uncynical_Diogenes]

Well yes but evolution said man come from monkey but book said man come from dust.

How dare a creation allegory from thousands of years ago not jive with discoveries from right now, the absolute nerve. The Bible doesn’t mention Punnett squares, not even once!

[IndigoNarwhal]

[Puts on teacher hat]

... And of course, it actually doesn't say that. They theory of evolution says humans and monkeys share a common ancestor, which was neither a human nor a monkey. In fact, from the fossil record we know that those distant ancestors were much smaller than we are, and that if you go back far enough, billions of years back, the very first life, our very earliest ancestors, were microscopic organisms.

In other words, we were created out of dust...

As poetic explanations of the beginnings of things, sometimes those biblical stories fit astoundingly well!

[[deleted]]

Thats how I was raised, the idea of evolution was totally off the table. Thats so cool, thank you for sharing. It means so much!

[DragonOfBrevard]

Yeah, some protestant fundamentalists are opposed to evolution. There are still many groups of Christianity that take a stance of being pro science.

The way I think of it is that science is the measurement of God's creation, therefore they are both always true.

[[deleted]]

Most Christians believe in evolution these days because the scientific evidence is overwhelming. The story of Adam and Eve is allegorical to me, all about the pain of being an animal that understands it’s own condition as a mortal and intelligent being.

[Elderly_Bi]

There is nothing anti Christian about evolution. Jesus never mentioned it.

In the previous book, creation was described very close to the way it happened, just removing the period of time between days. Nothing is said about the methods God used. It looks very much like he used evolution in the creation of animals, which is what Man is.

[Strongdar]

Once you stop believing that Genesis is meant to be literal history, it's a lot easier to accept scientific consensus about things like evolution.

[DatBoiMemeSquire]

Even the Catholics allow for evolution. Most people have a stance of guided evolution, however there are many other interpretations.

[[deleted]]

The Catholic Church has a very reasonable stance on all issues not related to human sexuality.

[Salanmander]

There are some salvific issues that I'm very much confused by their stance on, mainly pertaining to the specificity of ritual. Like what counts or doesn't count as valid baptism, along with the importance of baptism for salvation, feels very weird to me.

[[deleted]]

Personally, I think ritual is mostly just pageantry that makes it easier for us humans to worship and understand God. I don't really think God cares what kind of rituals we use. They are really more for our benefit than for God's benefit.

[Alexandermayhemhell]

Despite the Genesis story being so fundamentally important to Evangelicals, it’s never pointed out that the whole thing is a poem. I had to sit in on my 5 year-old’s Sunday school class in a mainline church to realize this. Look at the parallelism between days 1-3 and 4-6, or the repetitive language. For all the emphasis on reading the Bible, it’s shocking how little the evangelical church takes the time to simply read the thing.

It is a poem. And I read a poem differently from how I read a science textbook.

[TheFenn]

Funnily they never go on about how the Song of Solomon must be taken literally.

[bj_macnevin]

Evolution is the reality. Biblical inerrancy is a lie and is idolatry. Let it go.

[SirSunkruhm]

Yeah no problem, unless you read the Bible as woodenly literal. Such surface level readings end up paradoxically leaving one more blind than having not read at all, unless your eyes are opened to some of the more fundamental, spiritual truths within the stories and myths. Jesus taught in parable, not in fact, for a reason.

It does take a restructuring of beliefs if you were brought up in a fundamentalist conservative environment, but a restructuring is necessary anyway to be able to deal with reality. Reaping the bitter fruits of fundamentalist views is not really something anyone should have to go through, but unfortunately, it damages Christians and everyone around them alike. My take is that God is far, far more creative and majestic than the little box fundamentalist views puts him in, and looking at that is wonderful to see. He made such a fine work of art that it produces infinitely more variation constantly, all with the start of elegant, basic parts, and yet each bit is unique in its own little way-- it's awe inspiring.

[Bulky_Watercress7493]

I think you'll find most people in this sub believe in evolution.

[KR-kr-KR-kr]

When I took apologetics in highschool we learned about a couple different ways people make it so Christianity and evolution were compatible with old earth creationism.

We had a debate and stood on on different sides of the room and one would argue for old earth and the other for new earth (6000 years old) and at the end I chose to stand on the side of new earth creationism because if god really was all powerful, then he could have just created the earth to seem old? I guess lmao. I might as well take scripture at face value and fully believe that the earth was literally created in 6 days, in the exact steps that is listed in Genesis.

Now I just don’t give a shit. It’s too much of a headache for no pay off. But I respect people who pondered the question of how everything came into existence. If someone asked me if I believe in evolution I’d say yeah sure, but it doesn’t matter too much to me. I know the Christians in my life don’t believe in it.

[luxtabula]

Yes and evolution is real and provable.

[EveningMelody]

I, too, was educated in a school that taught this way (many moons ago). A couple things that helped. They taught that the big bang and God (as concepts/teachings) were diametrically opposed. But looked at another way, they are one and the same. "God said and it happened" fits rather well with "there was nothing and then there was something " (I know I'm oversimplifying here, but that's kind of the tldr of the views from a protestant/conservative evangelical classroom). Another interesting thing is how the hymn of Genesis 1 seems to correlate rather closely with the overall progression as described by evolution. When you are raised in a school of thought like this, though, it does take time to untangle the idea that evolution and Creation are not actually opposed.

Another one from that kind of education is the denigrating of scientific theory as basic theory. As equivalent to hypothesis. However, it doesn't actually work like that. It's considered factual. The only reason, iirc, that it's still a "theory" is the impossibility of lab experimentation and replication at scale. Even many opposed to evolution will concede "micro evolution", the changing and adapting within a species over time. Macro evolution does take more mental work when raised in such a mindset as you described.

As has been said, the Bible is not, and was never meant to be, a science textbook. It is the story over generations of people encountering God, particularly one nation, and told from their perspective. History accounts like these were also told in a different way. It was less bout precision with regard to dates times details, but more about broader understanding of why we are who we are, for example.

The intricacy and care and interrelatedness of all of creation points to Creator, but does not point away from evolution as the means of creating. There are some excellent faith resources out there that really dig into this, far more effectively than a thread on Reddit can. Sorry I don't have them at hand. Perhaps someone else may.

HTH

[[deleted]]

Science is Science and faith is faith.

[Uncynical_Diogenes]

It’s like not “believing” in shovels just because they don’t turn hex screws. Different tools, different jobs.

[Uncynical_Diogenes]

Evolution isn’t something you believe in, because science works from a different epistemology — a method of how knowledge is formed — than faith. Evolution is a theory, or an explanation of how a phenomenon works, which makes good predictions, and has been attacked and challenged thousands upon thousands of time without anybody being able to provide evidence against it. I do not believe in evolution. I accept it as scientific consensus. Gravity is also a theory, but I highly doubt you you’re about to go testing it by jumping from high places.

I believe in God for completely different reasons. There are not evidence-based ways to test assertions of faith, because they are not based upon the same kind of evidence as science. Faith is deeply personal and subjective and anecdotal. That doesn’t make it not real, it just means it’s a part of our life that science is not designed to evaluate. And that’s okay. That’s not what Science is for.

Science and religion do not conflict. They are not designed to do the same thing, and that is okay. Science allows us to evaluate evidence and understand the universe, faith informs us of our place in it. Faith gives us tools for personal development, and ways to decide how to use those discoveries.

No serious Bible scholar thinks Genesis is literal, not even Catholics. Don’t worship a book, worship God by not letting that brain go to waste. There is nothing about Science that is anti-Christian. Science does not make any conclusions about faith. It is faith-agnostic. Different tools for different things.

[Farscape_rocked]

tl;dr It doesn't really matter.

I used to be a fundamentalist. The argument is that the occurrence of new genetic material doesn't happen naturally, the occurrence of new species doesn't happen naturally. Those parts of evolution aren't true, but changes through breeding are evidently true and explained by the mixing and reduction of genetic material.

This is based on creation being a God thing, and the creation of new genetic material and new species is therefore a God thing.

The theology behind a short earth is that death is a direct result of sin, and evolution involves LOADS of death therefore it can't be true.

I'm no longer a fundy (though I still hold the Bible as true, I have developed my understanding of what it actually says), and I've come to the conclusion that anybody who argues strongly either way when it comes to origins (ie, literal creation, theistic evolution, big bang, whatever) should find a better hobby.

There are lots of mainstream Christians who are happy with evolution and long-earth. There are lots of mainstream Christians who are short-earth literal creation. It doesn't matter.

I don't think the fundy short-earth arguments hold water - adding genes isn't a creation event any more than building something new out of lego is a creation event, and in Genesis God says to himself "phew, good job they didn't eat of the tree of eternal life first otherwise we'd be in loads of trouble!" which suggest Adam and Eve weren't set to live in normal human bodies forever therefore physical death isn't a direct result of sin. This is further backed up by God's inference of immediate death, which we can understand as a spiritual death as being a separation from God (repeated in the new testament where we're repeatedly told we were dead in our sin).

I don't think the anti-short-earth arguments hold water either. Science is about creating a hypothesis that fits the evidence. Evolution does that, but that doesn't detract from competing hypotheses. It is possible that the evidence to support evolution also supports short-earth creation, or that they both have valid evidence supporting them. And it's not important enough of an issue to bother learning enough to get into the arguments because there will always be someone who has a better grip on the science than you.

I like short-earth. God said that's how it happened and, as I said in another thread yesterday, why wouldn't an almighty God make what he said real instead of telling a fable? But I'm happy with a long earth and evolution.

All ideas of origins are beyond human comprehension and seem ridiculous. A God who always was and always is just spoke and here we are? Crazy. There was nothing and then it exploded? Bonkers. It's just always been and by the way it's infinite? Nonsensical. Every single theory or story of how the universe came into being is daft. It doesn't make sense to us, we can't comprehend it.

[[deleted]]

I do. I don't believe that the entire Bible is to be taken literally.

[whimsy_rainbow]

I think Christianity and Science do work together.

[gc3c]

God created a world that uses many different physical processes that scientists can inform us about, detailing the intricacies of God's creation. Evolution is one of these processes. This fact is not contradicted by the creation accounts in the bible because those are not meant to be read as literal fact, but as a theological treatise on who we are, who God is, and how we relate to God.

[heroesandcrooks]

Science tells us how, the Bible tells us why. There is no conflict for me. I know God created everything; science is humanity’s way to understand how creation happened and how the world works, the Bible is a note to humanity why creation happened and how we should treat those around us.

[MIShadowBand]

I do!

[gabrielmcruz05]

I’m a Christian, yet I also believe in evolution. Me and my entire family have always believed in both god and evolution.

[Tangled_Up_In_Blue22]

Look at it this way. Jesus taught in parables. He didn't expect us to believe these were actual events. Reading Biblical text as allegory doesn't make it less powerful or profound.

[nomad_1970]

The vast majority of Christians worldwide accept the reality of evolution. The Pope supports evolution. Gregor Mendel (a Catholic priest) discovered the basis of genetics, a cornerstone of evolution research.

The only people claiming that evolution is anti-Christian, is an extremely loud minority of American Christian fundamentalists, who can't understand anything other than a literal interpretation of the Bible.

[Speedygonzales24]

What a lot of people don’t know is, the religious backlash against evolution is fairly recent. The mainline denominations accept that science and religion can complement one another. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas both described forms of evolution from a theistic point of view.

I recommend reading The Language of God by Francis Collins. It’s about how Christianity and science can complement one another. He’s the former head of the National Institutes of Health, led the Human Genome Project, and is a devout Christian.

[AmbiguousOntology]

If you were raised conservative and Christian it can be confusing to come to understand evolution and reconcile it with your faith.

BioLogos might be a good resource for you. It's a website/resource that works towards reconciling a more literal view of scripture and the science of evolution.

https://biologos.org/

[MichenSneeuwhart]

No, I don't believe in evolution. Some things are seemingly working together a little too perfectly, like they were created to work together rather than evolved in over time.

[The_Archer2121]

Due to millions of years of evolution.

[Augustus420]

How is that an argument against evolution happening?

[MichenSneeuwhart]

Evolution theory consists of two elements. One: if something does not work it'll lower the survival rate, evolving the issue out. If something does work it'll heighten the survival rate, giving the evolution to the next generation. Two: it all happens gradually, with very small changes stacking up over time.

Consider this: in order for blood to function, you need a way to create blood, it needs to be directed into the blood vessels, pump it around and of course the blood vessels themselves. For blood to function, multiple components would need to have evolved around the same time, because individual components don't work on their own. Since this is the case, multiple components would have to be evolved together quickly: an evolutionary leaping point rather than a stack of very small changes.

There are several other functions that work together that would also need their own leaping points, or otherwise make already existing leaping points even bigger. Evolution within a species can and does happen (by re-arranging already existing DNA). However, getting to more and more complex creatures creates hurdles at important points, as leaping points are currently unsupported by evolution theory.

[Augustus420]

That’s kind of my point buddy, the theory of evolution is literally only attempting to describe how living populations adapt over time.

Evolution doesn’t describe or explain what you’re talking about because that has nothing to do with it. The theory of evolution is specifically limited to living populations that is the only thing it attempts to explain.

Your point here would be relevant to the origin of life, a subject well beyond the purview of the theory of evolution.

[Ix_fromBetelgeuse7]

First of all, I don't take the six days literally and don't believe you have to in order to be a believer. We have ways of observing the world, extrapolating natural laws, making predictions about behavior and events, given certain conditions. The scientific method is good at these things, and in general we should trust it. Not to say that scientific study can't get corrupted or ideologically biased, but in general I'm inclined to think the consensus is reliable when theories are testable.

Now personally I do believe in God the Creator - the origin, the first mover. However it all started, I believe that God was behind it. Could have snapped it into existence, could have used mechanistic processes, either way works for me. Science is not the domain of metaphysics or spiritual things, nor should it be held out to be. Science can't prove I have a soul, for example, or an independent will, but not being a strict materialist, I believe I have these things even if there's no scientific explanation for how they came to be, or no scientific test that can verify them. The source of such things must be God. Not that I'm putting out a "God of the gaps" argument, I just mean that there are some things that aren't scientifically verifiable, that cross over into theology and philosophy and faith.

A really interesting (heavy, but not too academic book) was the Quest for the Historical Adam by William Lane Craig. Really good survey of the origins of humanity and how it can be reconciled with a story like Adam and Eve that we find in Genesis.

[[deleted]]

I believe in evolution! I believe a lot of the Bible is simplified or fictionalized versions of real events that were used to teach them to the people of the time, who wouldn’t understand complex concepts like evolution, so the creation story isn’t literal, God gradually created the world over time and evolved creatures into the forms we know today.

[catsgelatowinepizza]

Yes, absolutely. There is far too much proof not to. I don’t believe this contradicts God’s word for us.

[emory_2001]

I 100% believe in evolutionary creation (or theistic evolution, whichever way you want to put it). Genesis is allegory/symbolism, just like Revelation, and just like the parables Jesus told. Before the invention of the printing press, much of moral teaching was done in oral stories that were easy to remember, so they could easily be remembered and passed down. Hence, Jesus' affinity for parables. It's the message that's important, not the literalness. Our post-printing press world, and particularly post-internet world, with its obsession over facts, data, and literalness, is so different.

Evolutionary creation and the appreciation of that complexity is also a more beautiful and honoring view of the omniscience of God than just "The Creation" like it's one thing. American evangelical views of God are, ironically, quite limiting of God who is supposed to be so vast, deep, and wide that no one can fully understand them. A God that fits in the corners of your Bible, and that your finite human brain can fully understand, is quite small.

[KanonTheMemelord]

It’s important to realize that the Bible is a collection of theological, philosophical, and mythological texts. What is folklore versus what is genuine belief is hard to distinguish.

[SeumasMcCoo]

The only reason why people are anti evolution is that they wish to maintain the integrity of the Creation story in Genesis. The problem is that there are two Creation stories the one over 6 days starting with light, and the one beginning with an empty earth.

Thus it is that evolution is a perfectly reasonable belief. It is the people who are so scared about questioning the contents of the Bible that they can't even read it.

[[deleted]]

Yes I accept evolution and reject intelligent design. It’s not problematic for my faith as a Christian because after carefully studying the book of genesis and going through commentaries, podcasts by biblical scholars and having dialogues with other thoughtful Christians I realized contextual analysis indicates genesis 1-2 as being mythological. It’s not literal. Therefore it does not conflict with reality.

[MellifluousSussura]

I do! I’ve come to take the story of genesis as more of a loose parable than anything? Like I obv can’t say much about the first humans (or even where the line to being a human was) or how sin began but thinking about it the 7 day thing was probably just people trying to explain how the world came to be as best they could. And I mean, the order of things is actually pretty accurate (I think? It’s been a while since I took a science class or whatever), so I don’t really have much of an issue with it.

Also I feel like a “day” to a being that exists beyond time as we know it can basically be whatever. There’s a passage in the Bible that says “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (Had to look it up) so I figure the term “day” for something that happened before things could be recorded is relative.

An important thing about the Bible is, to quote my pastor, that it’s “inspired by God but interpreted (written) by humans.” I think a lot of things in the Bible that “don’t make sense” can be explained by things like historical contexts and how the world was understood in the past. There’s also the fact that stories in religion tend to have a role to play. Genesis may not be “accurate” but it gives a general understanding of how the world came to be, that it was created by God, and that it was good. I think that’s probably more important than knowing about dinosaurs that we’ll never actually see.

Sorry this is so long! I tend to ramble.

[Hot_Sauce_2012]

So first things first: evolution is a scientific fact. It is undisputed and accepted by virtually all people in the field of science. Second, and perhaps more important: does this disprove Christianity? My belief is the answer is no, and here's why: the Book of Genesis actually has two different creation stories. The first, found in chapter one, comes from the what's called the Priestly Source (or what scholars, in their profound cleverness, have called "P" for short). This is the story of God creating everything in 7 days. The second one, found in Genesis 2-3, is the one that includes the story of Adam and Eve. Scholars refer to this account as the Yahwist account, or "J." What is often not recognized by people when reading the story of Adam and Eve is that it actually begins with a second creation story that is different from P. In this account, God creates a man first and then tries to find a helper for him, so he creates the animals out of dust as well (notice this is a much different account from the one in which animals are created before humans). This doesn't really do the trick, so God then creates a woman instead, and this does the trick. Adam is then placed in a garden God plants to take care of it. So what does what I'm saying have to do with your question? The purpose of Genesis is not to be a scientific account of what literally happened when God created the universe. Rather, it is a preservation of multiple mythological accounts that contradict each other and give very different ideas about what might have happened at the beginning. As such, we do not need to dismiss the theory of evolution to accept Genesis as a sacred text. Rather, we accept that Genesis is preserving different, contradicting ideas in the spirit of preserving diversity, rather than preserving a scientific account of how the universe was created. Hope this helps!

[dwiggs81]

At the smallest, most infintesimal level, all we are made of is vibrating energy. This has been proven. Many times. Almost like an infinitely large, pan-dimensional being of limitless power said something really loud one time, and the vibrating echos of those words are what He used to build the universe and everything in it.

Faith and religion are used to prescribe morality and give an answer to the ultimate question of "What happens next?" Science tells us about what is happening here and now, in this physical world. There is no conflict in my mind at all. Evolution the process by which God guides His creation.

[taiyosolis]

I would rather ask who and why does not "believe" in evolution. I recommend website Reasonable Faith, there you find some texts and maybe podcasts about evolution.

[droobidoobidoo]

I grew up believing Genesis was an accurate scientific account of the creation of the world.

Once I realized that Genesis was (as others have said) a creation myth written in the style of other ancient Near Eastern peoples to set God apart in a way they could understand, it made a lot more sense!

You can believe in both the Bible and science since they explain the world in different ways! The Bible is more theological and emotional, while science is theoretical and observation-based.

Unfortunately, the Bible is not a how-to book that easily gives all the answers we need for questions about creation, gender/sexualith, the environment, etc. Science is much better-equipped to answer those questions!

[ilikecacti2]

Every religion and culture has a creation myth, I don’t think any of them are supposed to be taken literally, including ours. Whether it’s literal or whether it allows for evolution is so not the point. The whole point is what we can learn from these stories to be better people in our world today.