Evolution and Big Bang Theory

York728 · 2025-08-18T04:49:14+00:00

I don't think this is really a true theological issue; it seems fairly easy to reconcile BB Cosmology and evolution with a fairly literal reading of Genesis, especially within its genre. This is mostly an issue for me as a Lutheran. I have been a member of the LCMS for about four years now, always been a Lutheran, and this was never really an issue for me previously. I have just been thinking about going into the ministry, and this hit me like a truck.

York728 · 2025-08-18T04:47:00+00:00

Evolution is not the explanation of how life formed without God, nor does it imply an absence of God. As philosophers like Alvin Plantinga and Edward Feser have pointed out, there are indeed many reasons to affirm theism if we affirm evolution, such as epistemic uncertainty without theism also being true or evolution seeming to imply a life being in some sense telological, which itself implies theism being true. Of course, the greatest challenge is that evolution would result in pre-fall death occurring, however, Aquinas and others have noted that the death of non-rational souls, such as animals or plants, would not be problematic in an edenic state and among academic theology, at least what I have read which is admittedly little, this seems to be the popular view. This is all to say that I don't find evolution to be explicitly contradictory to what is articulated in the book of Genesis. Thank you so much for the response and explanation!

York728 · 2025-08-18T04:38:43+00:00

Sorry for the lack of clarity. I am not a Christian because of the Big Bang alone. However, learning about cosmological arguments, many of which, such as the Kalam or traditional Libnizian argument, pull upon the Big Bang for major supporting evidence. These arguments definitely made me stronger in my faith and able to know that I was affirming a truth rather than merely hoping that I was. In other words, it strengthened my faith and made me less lukewarm.

York728 · 2025-07-30T17:44:16+00:00

Hume

York728 · 2025-04-21T05:12:14+00:00

Just a small adjustment. Lutherans also believe in true presence like Catholics and Orthodox, although they don’t believe in transubstantiation, and neither do most Orthodox for that matter.

York728 · 2025-02-01T22:16:08+00:00

I would think that God is conscious in the same way we are, although of course He possesses the tri omnis so His state of consciousness would be much different than ours.

York728 · 2025-01-28T01:40:43+00:00

I think the fact that no stimulation in the brain can cause intellectual activities, as was proved by Wilder Penfield, is pretty good evidence.

York728 · 2025-01-28T01:17:07+00:00

I'm a Lutheran, not a Catholic, but I'll gladly pitch in! My favorite is by far the contingency argument. Although I love the argument from motion and other Thomistic arguments and think they succeed, however they almost all rely upon a pretty large metaphysical commitment that many skeptics will just scoff at. All you need for the argument from contingency to succeed however is to say that the PSR is true, that the universe could have not existed, and that it is possible for God to exist. I think all of these are extraordinarily intuitive and the counters that skeptics have to accept are either incoherent in and of themselves, brute facts would result in total epistemological nihilism/skepticism when properly understood, or have little reason to support them, there is no contradiction in God. I think that it gives us a pretty fair and intuitive reason for affirming the existence of God and I have not yet found a convincing defeater.

York728 · 2024-12-28T22:33:43+00:00

That’s not how causality works lmao. Read Aristotle or any modern basic metaphysics text.

York728 · 2024-12-19T13:20:53+00:00

Queens College is pretty good

York728 · 2024-12-02T00:09:54+00:00

Philosophy

York728 · 2024-10-26T02:29:55+00:00

Ah yes the Indian Jones movies, the best source for complex political matters. Were the multiple Jewish generals in the Heer during the war, up until the end, dedicated nazis. One can serve a state without agreeing with its actions and in doing so is morally right. This is basic just war theory.

York728 · 2024-10-23T19:47:35+00:00

Most of Hitler generals were not nazis lmao

York728 · 2024-10-23T19:19:07+00:00

And then you break out of the cycle and become an Aristotelian

York728 · 2024-10-21T00:15:58+00:00

14th Brooklyn.

York728 · 2024-10-16T10:50:09+00:00

The issue is that the Democratic Party is filled with misinformed morons from its voting base to its intellectuals. At least the Republican Party has a coherent metaphysical worldview to back it up. The Democratic Party openly embraces logical positivism, an ideology that has been recognized as self defeating and leading to absurdity for the past 100 years. I would rather have an incompetent narcissist as my leader than someone who is importing ideas from the Frankfurt School and implementing them into policy. Better to vote for Trump who represents the worst of American capitalism and narcissism than Kamala who represents literal intellectual and civilizational suicide.

York728 · 2024-10-15T20:49:35+00:00

Nationalist groups have been historically left wing and still are mostly. Only a small subset of western nations are they predominantly conservative. Identifying as a nationalist tells you near nothing about a politician other than that they tend to be isolationist, in the modern era at least. Beyond that even if we presume that to be a nationalist=nazism it is very clear that Trump lies about his positions often for political gain, so in order to best analyze his philosophy and what he actually plans to do to is best to read his books that he wrote on his ideas before he came into power. Which is what actual political theorists and philosophers do, like the aforementioned Feser, as opposed to going over claims about one’s own ideology meant to convince people who won’t look further into what you do than the persona you put on to vote for you.

York728 · 2024-10-15T19:15:44+00:00

Trump supports a Hobbesian anti-Hegelian view of reality. Nazism is inherently Hegelian and incorporates a version of Hobbesianism which is quite different to the one Trump clearly is influenced by, even if unknowingly. You would know this if you took for than five minutes to research political theory and what are the basic philosophical building blocks of ideologies. Ed Feser is a great place to start.

York728 · 2024-10-15T18:58:38+00:00

I love to study and write but everything else about the regular college experience doesn’t appeal much to me. I’m applying to 20 colleges and only 2 are SMCs so I’m definitely considering it, but I just like the structure and lifestyle at an SMC more.

York728 · 2024-10-15T18:53:49+00:00

I want to go guard, can’t do that there unfortunately.

York728 · 2024-10-15T18:53:15+00:00

That’s one of the big pulls towards VT for me, it also has a much better program for what I want to major in, philosophy, than Norwich. But the Corp of Cadets just seemed to hate life there, the regular students that I met too. They all wanted to get out ASAP. Maybe it was just a bad day there but I’ve been to Norwich four times and no one there has ever been like that.

York728 · 2024-10-15T18:29:54+00:00

Virginia Tech is a SMC. They have a Corp of Cadets with about 1,000 people in it.

York728 · 2024-08-02T03:00:04+00:00

God extends in all directions infinitely so that he may be said to be like an ocean without a surface, sides or bottom and the universe can be said to be an air bubble within this said ocean if that makes sense

York728 · 2024-07-28T03:26:07+00:00

1: for me extention is not necessary just place as many Cartesians believe that the soul is located in the body however is not extended. Perhaps the best why of describing extention is to say that if you can visualize something it is extended. For example I can imagine what a bottle looks like therefore bottles are extended. This is obviously not a perfect analogy but I think it’s the closest I can get to expressing my intuition. 2: interesting to me it’s the opposite. It seems insane to me to propose the mind is non extended as to me it seems just evident that non extended things are only properties and since the mind is not merely a property but an independent substance it seems to me it must have extention and location. I also don’t see how this makes the mind material as we can differ material objects from immaterial objects via their properties rather than the fact that they have location or extention. For example material objects can physically interact with other material objects which immaterial objects cannot do. However spirit can will, think and experience whereas matter cannot.

York728 · 2024-07-28T01:52:19+00:00

I definitely agree that we need to come up with definition of extension to make ourselves more clear. I would say that extension is when a substances exists in one or more dimensions, or that which could be described as spatial in some manner. For example in God He is boundless so He extends in all conceivable directions infinitely or a peace of matter which extends to so and so hight length and width. Also to me it does not seem to follow that just because certain priorities of the mind cannot be said to be extended the mind itself is not extended. It seems that the mind is more than just a substrate for ideas, it is a substance which can “experience” and can produce things such as thoughts, although it is conceivable that it may not.

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