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Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Refuting someone

Well I found out my worldview falls under the definition of theistic evolution (it did before, but I hadn't given it all the thought I needed). Theistic evolution is in fact the worldview held by the majority of Christians throughout the world, so I'm definitely not alone.
Anyway, I just thought I'd refute someone else's article speaking against the way I see the world. His article can be found at http://creation.com/10-dangers-of-theistic-evolution.
His article takes the form of 10 "dangers" of the theistic evolution worldview. I'll present my arguments regarding each one in the same order as he's presented them.

1: Misrepresentation of the nature of God
The basic issue here is that evolution depends on the death of countless unsuccessful organisms in order to promote the successful ones. And it's assumed that death, suffering, etc could not have taken place prior to the original sin. The problem here is that the first sin mentioned in the bible is not the eating of the forbidden fruit but the deciept of the serpent. Therefore even in the literal account, sin had already entered the world before the fall of man.

2: God becomes a God of the gaps
Here, the article's author presumes that in accepting evolutionary theism, we reduce the role of God in our view of creation. This is plain naive and a blatant misrepresentation of the theistic evolutionist worldview. I don't just say "God did it" when I don't know how something happened: I believe God is part of how the universe works, even the parts we CAN explain!

3: Denial of central biblical teachings
For his third objection, the article's author essentially denies the gospels and presents the first chapter of Genesis as the core foundation of the bible. He obviously hasn't read the bible: he hasn't even read the second chapter of Genesis, which gives a completely different creation story. Obviously, if a literal interpretation of those chapters is self-contradictory, then they were never intended to be taken literally!

4: Loss of the way for finding God
Here he pretends that theistic evolution denies the existence of sin. He's completely wrong. Only one group of people doesn't believe that many of the world's problems are caused directly or indirectly by human greed (commonly recognised as a sin). We call those people sociopaths.

5: The doctrine of God's incarnation is undermined
No it isn't. There is no logical contradiction. None at all.

6: The biblical basis of Jesus' work of redemption is mythologized
Once again, the article's author is asserting a logical contradiction when none is present. Finding a few quotes which on first reading appear to support one's reading does not prove that one has an understanding of the quote's source, or that the quote's source is in agreement with one's conclusion. Claiming that Adam is the basis for Jesus' work completely undermines the gospel of Christ, and denies all responsibility for one's own sin.

7: Loss of biblical chronology
If chronology was so important for the biblical authors, they would have written everything in chronological order. They didn't. The author claims the age of the earth can be estimated from the genealogies of the bible: that is in fact a bald-faced lie. It ignores the number of biblical personnages who are given multiple contradictory genealogies which cannot be reconciled within a literalistic interpretation. In short, a literalistic interpretation is reliant on an extremely limited knowlege of biblical text.

8: Loss of creation concepts
Here the article's author is merely restating his belief that a literal interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis (even though he hasn't read the second chapter) is the only reason for the bible's existence.

9: Misrepresentation of reality
My rebuttal is in the author's own dishonesty and misrepresentation of his own religion.

10: Missing the purpose
Unlike the author of that article I know that the whole idea behind christianity is that the life and death of Jesus bridged the divide between God and creation. John 3:16 says "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life". Unlike the author of the article I'm refuting my belief actually motivates me to read the bible instead of just assuming what someone else says about it is actually true.
For all that: I cannot believe that God is inconsistent enough to save the apostle Thomas (who refused to believe in Christ's resurrection without hard evidence) yet refuse to save Richard Dawkins, whose sin is no greater, but who will most likely die without seeing hard evidence. Humans are inconsistent, human expression of God's inspiration is inconsistent (and I believe often at odds with the source of the inspiration), but the God I believe in is not inconsistent.

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