Saturday - December 22, 2007

Christianity and Evolution

My good friend “Lucid Guy” over at Ramblings of an Ordinary Guy, posted a story about Mike Huckabee the other day.  In that post he mentioned: “I’m a Christian. I also believe in evolution as a process. I believe both can exist together”.  I don’t agree with that statement, so I asked him if he’d be willing to do a blog-debate on the topic.  He agreed.  So what will follow is a back-and-forth exchange of ideas and philosophies between friends on a topic where we have differences.

I know there are many non-Christians that will take issue with the premise of creation over evolution from the forefront, but that is not the topic of this debate (we can certainly discuss that in another post).  We would like to examine the literal 6, 24-hour days of creation as presented in Scripture against the other possibilities being discussed in Christian circles.

I’ll open with the first post.  My position is this:

It is unreasonable for a Christian to believe in anything other than the 6 literal days of creation as described in Genesis, chapter 1 as the explanation for how the universe and everything in it got here.

There are many good people of the Christian faith that do not hold to this position.  They incorporate various forms of evolution into the story.  Some say that each day represented an era of time.  Some say that it doesn’t really matter what we believe about the creation story because it is not central to the Christian faith.  I will attempt to lay out my arguments for a literal, six 24-hour days of creation.  In a later post, I will defend why this is important to Christians, even if they don’t think it is now.

So, to begin, here are my a few of my reasons for asserting this argument:

1. The Hebrew word for “day” used in this passage is “Yom”.  As in English, this word can have a couple of meanings.  It can be “day”, as in 24 hours, but it can also mean “time”, as in a passage of time as well as other things.  But, when it is used with a number, or with the phrase “evening and morning”, it always has the meaning of a 24 hour day.  What do we find in the Genesis passage?  Both “evening and morning” as well as “the 2nd day, the 3rd day”, etc.  Syntactically, it means a 24-hour day.



2. Christians believe that the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 was when death was introduced into history.  This is backed up in Romans chapter 5, verses 12-14, which says:
   
   Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
   
   If we are to believe that creation took hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years, how could death have been introduced with Adam?  If nothing died before Adam’s fall, then the plants and animals would have had to live without dying as well.



3. At the end of the creation process in Genesis 1:31, God declares everything he has created as “very good”.  If there were death and disease before this time, how could He have declared it as “very good”?

Lucid Guy, you’re up.  What say you?

Posted by Drew458     on 12/22/2007 at 09:17 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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