emotional

The YECs have the edge when it comes to the death question. The doctrine that Jesus Christ conquered death can only have meaning if death was brought into the world by Adam's sin. Old Earth positions (including OEC and TE), which hold that death existed prior to Adam's sin, make Jesus' resurrection from the tomb a bit meaningless. Under YEC, Christianity really turns out to be a meaningful, relevant religion; not so under OE positions. It is because I reject YEC that I reject Christianity as a whole.

Warcraft3

Hello excreationist :
You will see........
Actually, the fact that "evenings and mornings" is used in conjuction with "days" should be an indication that these are NOT 24 hour days. Here is why.........
The text says "and was evening and was morning...the first day". How can there be a solar day without a sun? The first three days were definately not normal solar days. You could say that God made some kind of non-solar light source, but this violates the principle set up in Genesis 2 of God sustaining the creation through purely natural means.

Also.....the ancient Hebrews understood a 24 hour day to be an ordinary solar day, not some day produced by some arbitrary light source along with a rotating earth. Based on the ancient readers understanding of "day" the first 3 days (at the least) can not be viewed from the YEC viewpoint.

The analogy is clear from the text itself. The nature of the first three days show that the YEC view is not supported by scripture. Also the "work week" is simply an analogy-----not an exact equation.

It could have used a different word, but it didnt. That does not mean the YEC view is correct.


Russ

Warcraft3

Hello again emotional:
I disagree strongly. The YEC view of death is not a scriptural view. The "death" that Adam experienced was first spiritual, and secondly physical. Animal death was not a result of Adams sin, only the death of humans. The existance of the tree of life implies that God provided a supernatural means for man to avoid death. This was only provided for man though, not the animals.

God never pronounces the introduction of animal death or carnivorous activity as a result of the fall. This is a signifigant omission, since it would represent a fundamental change.

I believe the omission speaks volumes and reflects the fact that after Adam sinned there WAS NO change in the animal kingdom.

After the fall the earth did not change, neither did the plants, animals, weather, physics, chemistry, etc..

Only one thing changed. Man. Man had changed and now needed to be "saved".


Russ

emotional

Hi Russ.

I didn't say death after the fall was an outcome of reading Genesis, I only said it was crucial for Christianity.

The text of Genesis only mentions Adam and Eve being thrown out of the garden after they ate of the fruit. Judaism, which doesn't attach any value to the NT, holds as much: the fall from Eden wasn't Original Sin, but a loss of a world of real estate, and the gaining of the necessity to work for a living. The Qabbalah makes some mystical, symbolical dogma out of the Fall, but not a cosmic drama as Christianity did.

So in contrast to Judaism (and Islam), which describe the Fall as a faux pas that had bearing on Adam and Eve alone, Christianity makes a whole human, cosmic drama out of it. I think it is in Romans of the NT that it is mentioned that death entered the world because of the sin of one man.

There are Jewish and Islamic versions of creationism, but they're nowhere near so desperate as the Christian version. Jewish and Islamic creationists are incensed because the theory of evolution says we're related to apes. As one of my rabbis said to me when I was an observant Orthodox Jew: "evolution is impossible, because God did not give the Torah at Sinai to apes". And Islamic creationists bear similar sentiments - "man is not related to apes, man is something entirely else", as I read in one Islamic site.

Christianity, on the other hand, derives its whole raison d'être from a literal reading of Genesis, because it makes such a cosmic drama out of it: one man, the First Adam, sinned and brought death to the world, so that another man, the Last Adam or Jesus, had to conquer sin and death on the cross. Evolution is offensive to Christianity not just because it links us to the apes, but because it means the First Adam never existed!

No Adam - No Christ -- What happens When we Deny that Genesis 1 - 3 is History - from Diakrisis Ministries

In the NT, Jesus also refers to Genesis as a literal text. It has Jesus saying that "from the beginning of the creation He made them male and female". Now this a YEC statement if there ever was one! From the beginning of creation, and not after billions of years of evolution or old-earth creation, a male and female human were made.

I don't advocate YEC as science, of course, but I do find YEC theologically consistent. And since I don't take the claims of YEC seriously, I don't take Christianity seriously either. I have a deistic, spiritualist theology which is informed, among other things, by the fact of evolution. The God of evolution cannot be, I think, the God of the Bible, who is the God of special creation. I don't believe in non-overlapping magisteria of science and religion.

pz

This discussion seems to be drifting off into theological topics -- perhaps it would be better off to continue in this vein in GRD?

emotional

It's still about the "sociopolitical ramifications of evolution", I think.

pz

Theological arguments about competing religious interpretations of Genesis are not.

I'm not doing anything about this yet, but I'm just offering up a hint: if you want to talk about what Genesis means, you will do so more productively and with contributions from more religiously informed people if you do so in one of the more theologically inclined fora. Here, we're more accustomed to having rocks or genes or bones appear in the argument at some point.

RufusAtticus

I agree with you that theological ramifications of evolution do fit under "sociopolitical." However, I agree with pz that such a discussion might be better served in one of our bibilical forums. Nevertheless, I am willing to see what our little forum can do with this topic. I have to go to lunch now, but I will try to split this thread when I get back.

Warcraft3

Yo Emotional:

I would also say the whole death thing is crucial for Christianity, which is why I believe the YEC view is contrary to scripture. Death through sin and redemption through Christs death is only experienced by man. Christ did not die for animals and Adams actions did not affect the laws of physics or physical characteristics of the animals. Now his sin did affect the animals indirectly, since now sinful humans would be taking care of the earth. Thus the earth was cursed because of us.

Well, I certainly do not agree with you on that one. I find the OT to be clear that the fall was Original Sin, which resulted the loss of estate and the necessity to work hard for a living.

Yes, but Paul says "death through sin" and there is only one being on earth that can experience "death through sin" and that is humans. Animals can be affected by sin, but can not sin themsleves.

I find Glenn Mortons view on the first Adam to be an interesting one. I do believe in a literal Adam, although I have not hammered out the exact details yet. But I do not find evolution to be a problem with scripture at all.



Actually, even in a YEC view you cant take that statement to be a literal one. Adam and Eve were made after 5 days of "creation", so they were not literally created at the beginning. I could make a similar statement..........From the beginning of creation, and not after 5 consecutive days of creative acts, a male and female human were made.
So I am not so sure we can take Christs statement to be one of literal sequence, since "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form and void............"

I left YEC because I found many things within scripture which it failed to explain within a consistant theological framework. I find YEC to be shown false from the scripture, maybe we can get more into my exact reasons if you like.

Actually I think that Genesis may be making a subtle reference to evolution in the first creation week. I began to consider evolution as something which might actually be true BECAUSE of what I saw in scripture. The science came later.

Russ

emotional

The NT seems contrary to this view: there was no death, either of people or of animals, before Adam ate of the fruit. Another source which can be drawn upon is the prophecy of Isaiah, about the lion eating straw like an ox in the restored world.



The main difference between Judaism and Islam on the one hand and Christianity on the other is about the effect of the Fall. Judaism and Islam hold that Adam and Eve's fall affected them only (and their descendants only indirectly, in that we are not in the Garden of Eden now), whereas Christianity holds that their fall affected all their descendants thereafter with inherited sinfulness. Judaism and Islam do not know of Original Sin; it's a peculiarly Christian doctrine.



If there was no literal Adam, how are we all become sinful? Who fell? What was the original sin? Without a literal Adam, the concept of sinful humankind, in need of a saviour, is rootless. Humans who evolved from ape-like ancestors can't be more inherently sinful than apes are.




I don't know, I find this AiG diagram to be very convincing:





OK, though I expect the thread will be move to another forum...

Genesis referring to evolution?! Amazing, I've had the original Hebrew pumped into my head since elementary school and I've never succeeded in reading evolution into Genesis. Nor has it ever crossed my mind that Genesis should be read any other way than literally.

I don't see much possibility or even point in trying to salvage old theologies (of Judaism or Christianity) into the framework of evolution. It's so much like the proverbial "putting old wine in a new wineskin". The wineskin (fact) of evolution mandates new wine (theology), in my mind. I simply don't believe the God of the Bible is real, since His creation has been proved not to be. The God of evolution is the God of constant natural law, Who set the laws of nature in the beginning (15 billion years ago) and left them running freely. I don't believe prayer can change fate.