For example, Homo Erectus/Java "Man" was reconstructed from just a thigh bone, a skullcap and three teeth. The skull-cap and the leg-bone were about 50 feet apart.
Even modern day forensics can't pin-point the identity of a person by just examining a thigh bone or a skullcap or teeth.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. (Ps. 50)
Evolution is very much science. It is an attempt to make sense of observations.
Apparently, you understand evolution differently.
And again, since you define all evolutionists as atheists, which is ridiculous if you don't have a specific (to you) understanding of the term "evolutionist" - then obviously neither I nor any other Orthodox person could be an "evolutionist."
I suppose I will have to pose the question differently to you: Can someone refuse logic and science and still be Orthodox? Yes. Is it necessary to ignore logic and science to be Orthodox? No.
Global warming is not tested. The human body can not be "tested" for all things. Our ability to test is limited.
This is why we formulate theories - hypotheses - and try to refine them until they work better and better.
None of this has anything to do with religion.
Your demands that I answer your irrelevant and unworthy questions are far less Orthodox than my insistence that it is possible that God has left us clues as to how He made us and the universe.
If it is the purpose of the Bible to help us understand God, why would he not leave us other clues?
God exists outside time, but creation doesnt -- therefore the history of the creation can be detailed with the length of time it was created in. and there is a pretty good concensus among the Fathers that the days were literal. St. Basil said God spoke to Moses without riddle. there's no reason to think that evening and night is anything but an actual day.
Dear C.V.,
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Let me respond to your questions by first pointing out that you have repeatedly refused to answer my six basic questions about paleobiology and anthropology in relation to your Fundamentalist misinterpretation of [i]Genesis.[/i] Nevertheless,in order to illustrate the distortions in you Fundamentalist approach to undertstanding the history of life on earth, I will directly answer your questions (in red).1. At what point during the evolutionary process was the soul created?
According to Genesis, God breathed into the "specially created" Adamah--versus the routinely "created" adamah--man from earth(Hebrew)--and he "became a living soul." This would have occurred on the sixth day of creation--roughly 15 billion years after the Big Bang in earth-time,using the theory of relativity and Schroeder's calculations of relative cosmological clocks.
2. The Holy Scriptures state: "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin" (Romans 5:12). This is quite clear: by Adam's sin, death entered the world. Man brought death into the world. Evolution says that death brought man into the world. These are two opposing views. Which one do you believe?
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Living organisms from all phyla lived and died upon the earth for millions of years prior to the rise of Homo Sapiens and the gradual extinction of Homo Erectus. Hence, when St. Paul speaks of "death coming into the world through the sin of Adam (a Homo Sapien)," he is not talking about physical death as we think of the term in biology or paleobiology. He is talking of a form of death characterized by permanent spiritual alienation from God, prior to the death of Christ, which freed Adam and Eve, and others from Hades. For example, Christ God said of Lazarus, "This is not the sickness unto [b]death[/b]," even though Lazarus was biologically "dead" for four days. Hence, you are misinterpreting the language of St. Paul in an overly general, literal manner. Also recall that the Fall of Adam was related to his being cast out of a mystical paradise, a Garden which the Lord had planted for Adam. This reference to the Fall had to do with Adam falling from spiritual communion with God in this mystical paradise, and being cast out into the natural world where he would have to labor for his bread, and Eve would experience great pain in childbirth.3. Our Lord Jesus Christ said "But from the beginning of the creation, God made them [Adam and Eve] male and female" (Mark 10:6) Jesus said that Adam and Eve were created at the beginning, not millions of years after the beginning, like evolution says.
There are three possible explanations for this.
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Who is "them" here? And what aspect of the vast creation is referenced? Was Christ God referring here to animals being created with gender? Mammals? Primates? Homo Sapiens? God created many living organisms--though not all (e.g. nematodes, etc.)--with gender characteristics. Jesus does not misquote the holy Scriptures, because he does not say here that Adam and Eve were created [b]at the beginning of the creation of the cosmos[/b], as you misinterpret this. Afterall, even a Fundamentalist reading of [i]Genesis[/i] indicates that the adamah was not created until the sixth day--some 15 billion earth-years after the ex nihilo formation the universe at the time of the Big Bang--corresponding to the recent era of earth history when Homo Sapiens finally walked the earth.color=red Was Jesus lying?[/color]
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No, but it is easy to misinterpret His meaning if we do not understand the profundities of the cosmos, and the context and language in which he was speaking, as many Fundamentalists do not.color=red Did Jesus not understand modern science?[/color]
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Jesus was perfect God and fully human. As a man, he spoke in the idiom and world view of His time and place, often quoting the Hebrew scriptures available in His day. As God, He surely understood all of "science," but did not speak of modern scientific matters to His earthly first century audience, who would, incidentally, not have understood what He was saying if He had done so.color=red Was Jesus right? [/color]
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Of course Jesus was "right." Jesus Christ, the Word of God, "is the truth," as he told Pontius Pilate. It is you who are wrong, my earnest friend, in your refusal to open your mind and understand the profound relevance of the sacred Sriptures in relation to modern science--including biology, and astrophysics. You are right to revere the Holy Scriptures, but wrong to imagine that they contradict the truths of modern science, including Darwinian evolutionary theory, relativity, and modern astrophysics.
By the way, who were the daughters of men who married the sons of Adam and Eve? And who were the "daughters of men" who married the sons of God to form the giants, as described in Genesis 2? You never answered my questions.
Can you provide any quotes from the Holy Fathers to support this interpretation?
Pravoslavnik wrote:By the way, who were the daughters of men who married the sons of Adam and Eve? And who were the "daughters of men" who married the sons of God to form the giants, as described in Genesis 2? You never answered my questions.
Simple: in the first generation, they married sisters. For a start, there was no other choice. Secondly, who would you report them to? The law against incest came about 2,500 years later, when God gave the law to Moses. At this stage in the creation, there would not have been any genetic defects, so there was no need to have a law against incest.
Keep in mind that what you are advocating by your belief in theistic evolution is that God created man through a long process of death and suffering. Many creatures had to suffer and die, according to the evolutionary theory, so that only the fittest could survive and pass on their genetic material to the next generation. What kind of God would create using a long process of death and suffering, when He could have done it in six days, like the Bible says.
And about the "day-age" theory, there are several problems with that.
Holy Scripture says: "And he said: Let the earth bring forth the green herb, and such as may seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, which may have seed in itself upon the earth. And it was so done....And the evening and the morning were the third day" (Genesis 1:11,13)
So the plants were created on the third day. However, the sun was created on the fourth day.
"And God made two great lights: a greater light to rule the day; and a lesser light to rule the night: and the stars....And the evening and the morning were the fourth day" (Genesis 1:16,19)
Now, if each "day" is really an age of billions of years, then we have a problem. Plants need sunlight to grow. However, if the sun was not created until billions of years later, then the plants would have all died because there was no sunlight.
At the close of the Creation Week, God called everything He had made 'very good'. This is powerful evidence against the idea that long ages of suffering and dying took place before the first man and woman, Adam and Eve, appeared.