It's a lot to get through, but if anyone gets through it all and disagrees with my position, I'd love to know why because I'd like to make this more solid. I don't think I've covered everything yet. Also if you just have helpful pointers. Thanks.
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God-guided Evolution.
Around 150 years ago, Darwin proposed the theory of evolution to explain how living things came to be so complex and diverse. After the evidence for evolution piled up, Christians were left with a hard choice. Accept that the god of the Bible did not create us, or reject evolution out of ignorance.
However, there are those who cannot pick a side, and have come to believe Yahweh 'created' humans and other animals by guiding evolution.
The first important thing to understand is that evolution is blind. There is no guiding force. It can all be explained by random mutations and natural selection. To use one example, let's imagine a species of butterfly. After living in their habitat for several years without much trouble, a disease suddenly takes hold and kills most of them off. But a few survive - their genes are different. The random mutation in their DNA makes them immune to the disease, random mutation that makes every animal of a species slightly different from the others. They end up being the only ones left who can repopulate the species. Some time later, the butterflies are back to their usual numbers, but with one difference. They are ALL immune to the disease. The random mutation was passed on to them all, instead of being watered down in the gene pool as it would have been normally if the disease hadn't killed most of them. In other words, these butterflies evolved, and it all happened naturally. No god required.
Much of the time, species do not survive drastic change. In fact, evolution is so blind that 99% of all animals that have ever been on the Earth are now extinct. There certainly doesn't seem to be a holy force behind it at all. If there is, it can only be described as a lazy or inept one.
But what about humans? Did God focus on just our species? If we're talking about some kind of deist god, I can accept that as one possibility- just as I can accept it may have been possible a giant slug living on the dark side of Pluto guided human evolution with special mind powers or that aliens in invisible spacecraft orbiting the Earth guided human evolution with hi-tech gene changing rays and machinery that sees into the future. I don't see those things as very probable, but I certainly admit I cannot disprove any of that happened.
But here we're talking about the god of the Bible, and the beliefs involved do not allow for Yahweh-guided evolution. According to the Bible, and every Christian I know, Jesus died for our sins. More accurately, he died for our inherited sins. So let's have a look at this 'original sin'.
We all know the story. Adam and Eve, the first man and woman on Earth, sinned by eating fruit from a forbidden tree, after which they doomed all mankind.
First, to address those who believe this really happened. There are so many questions that arise if one sees this story as a real historical event.
If Adam and Eve were here 6,000 years ago (which they had to be if you follow the genealogical line from Adam to Jesus), then they weren't the first humans. We were on the scene much earlier than that.
If woman was already around, then what is the point of the story of man being lonely, and God making him a woman from his rib?
Adam is supposed to be the one who named the animals. Are we really supposed to believe that no one had named them until 6,000 years ago?
God 'cursed' the snake and made it crawl on its belly. What was it doing before 6,000 years ago? Flying?
Adam and Eve didn't realize they were naked. In a world full of clothed people, they didn't realize they were naked?
Did people between 6 and 4,000 years ago really live such long lifespans? 895 years, 777 years, 969 years, etc. Doubtful. Before the 'original sin', was everyone living such long lifespans?
Were people without pain in childbirth until 6,000 years ago?
If we are paying for the sins of Adam because we are his descendants- does this mean most of the planet doesn't have to worry because it's more likely we're the descendants of other people?
People had already made up gods earlier than 6,000 years ago. Why did the real God wait so long before turning up and saying 'Hey guys, I'm the real one. I know I've let you worship other gods for thousands of years because you knew nothing of me, but now I'm a bit angry about it, so stop. Oh yeah, don't murder either. What, you don't like murder already and you wouldn't have got this far if you did? But I'm the moral law giver! Ah screw it, I'm killing you all for talking back to me!'
I know those exact words aren't in the Bible, but neither is any mention of evolution, and many people think it's okay to add that in, so it's only fair that I should be able to add to the Bible too.
Maybe Adam and Eve were around much earlier than that. It has been suggested that the genealogical line from the Gospels may skip generations in order to shorten the account. In Matthew, the word 'father' is used. Could this really mean 'great great great (add however many 'greats' you think would be appropriate) grandfather'? Could the word 'son' in the family line of Luke 3 stand for 'great great great (again, add however many 'greats' you like) grandson'? If so, it becomes pointless to include any of the names. With all the gaps in the family line, it may aswell not be in there at all as it is no longer reliable for showing how Jesus was related to David or Abraham or Adam.
The fact it is in there shows that the writers wanted to show the link- and they thought the line was a short one. Only 4,000 years long.
More questions come up. Why does the Bible use the word 'son' or 'father' in this instance, yet uses words such as 'grandson' or 'grandfather' elsewhere in the Bible? Why does Matthew 1:17 say 'there were fourteen generations in all from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the exile to Babylon, and fourteen from the exile to the Christ.'? No mention of skipping generations there. It seems to be giving precise details of the family line that support a 4,000 year timespan. Precise details can also be found right back to Adam. Genesis 5:3-32 has the family line, complete with the number of years that passed before each had a child, from Adam to Noah's sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. Genesis 11:10-26 continues the line from Shem to Abram (Abraham). The writers go out of their way to show exactly how much time passes, and anyone who disagrees has much to explain.
But even if we go out of our way to give the benefit of the doubt and accept that the original sinners were earlier humans, it needs to be understood that there were never two original humans. That isn't how evolution works. Determining exactly when our species became 'human' is difficult enough. We are constantly evolving. It would be like saying your grandparents were a different species to your parents.
Perhaps God chose one couple from all the humans to test. If God was testing this one couple and they failed his test (which he would have known they would, seeing as this is God!) why put hardships on the rest of the humans around at the time who didn't fail him? Christians say God wants people to be good, yet in this case, even if they were, their efforts were in vain because God tested the ones he knew would fail. The logic also goes against the story of Soddon and Gomorrah, where God says if even one person can be found worthy, he won't take drastic action.
Obviously most of us are not 'Adam and Eve's' descendants, and their sins haven't been passed on to us. Therefore Jesus can't have died for all our sins. The sacrifice for all humanity is meaningless.
What then, was the whole point of Jesus coming to Earth and dying on a cross?
Moses (or whoever used that name) wrote the Genesis account around 3,500 years ago. How the story reached him by word of mouth over many thousands of years (from the early human sinners) is impressive. But what is even more impressive is that early humans hadn't even developed language! If God revealed the story to Moses, why did he wait so long before doing so? On that point, why lie about the family line going from the first humans onwards? Was it an error made by those who copied the Bible? Are we to believe that the story was passed orally for many, many thousands of years without error, then strangely enough error creeped in in the last few thousand years after the account had been written down, and was therefore less likely to have been tainted?
I find it baffling how Christians think God has given special consideration to the human species. How humble is it to think
that the creator of the universe has blessed one species out of millions on one planet out of billions? It's funny how the dinosaurs were around for much, much longer than us and had control of the planet too. Maybe they were inspired to write a dino Bible.The Bible is symbolic, metaphorical, and so on, claim some who still cling to their outdated beliefs. Jesus' death has meaning that we will understand one day, they say. If a person can make much of their book a mystery yet still state that it has something to do with a god, that kind of thinking can be applied to any book. Goldilocks and the Three Bears may aswell be a metaphor from God we don't understand yet. The Book of the Dead's mysterious writings may aswell be metaphors from Osiris or Ra. We may aswell all believe in Allah or Atum if all that's needed is a story of creation that has nothing to do with reality, mixed in with more cryptic stories. Now wouldn't that be a silly thing to do?
