Origens and Designs Faith and Science, Original Sin

by frankiespeakin 4 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  frankiespeakin

  Here something that you might like I just pasted part of it click on hmtl below for complete essay.

  Faith and Science
  
  Origins and Designs

  God created humankind from Adam and Eve, who represent a group of individuals. God created them with His spiritual and mental abilities. He created human souls before creation and breathed them into nonhuman primates to create human beings. These living souls were uniquely given intellect, free will, self-awareness, consciousness of others, dignity, conscience, purpose, responsibility and self-control. God then gave humans knowledge to implement the potential to choose. Only with knowledge could humans conceive of evil in God?s very good creation. Evil could not exist in a creation where nonhuman members had no ability to comprehend the concept. Without knowledge from Eden?s "tree of knowledge," nonhuman primates could not become human. God gave them that "knowledge of everything" to become human and have the ability to choose. Without knowledge, nonhuman life cannot suffer and comprehend that its existence is meaningless. That life cannot know evil, making it innocent and sinless; it exists in paradise. Humans equipped with knowledge to make choices can never live in paradise. They understand that the world?s evil results from human behavior, from human choices. Evil results from "sin (which is) explicable as an evolutionary survival from man?s animal origin." Humans can choose to rule their lives using God?s gifts of soul and reason or choose to be ruled by their nonhuman instinctual remnants. Any evolutionary process God uses to create takes nothing away from His revelations of who He is and what He has done.

  http://www.biblemetaphors.com/metaphors7.html#target_16
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  peacefulpete

  While appearing modern and logical, this now popular blending of Genesis with evolution is really just a cheap mental compromise retaining superstition and the paranormal while professing a respect to science. In fact it is bad science and weak religion. The person endorsing this is doing a diservice to science by ignoring the scientific method. "a little leven ferments the whole lump". In this case the leven is a 4000 year old myth. This does not mean that a person must be atheist to be true to science. It does mean that it is wrong to call science that which can not be demonstrated empirically or arrived at by a sound scientific arguement. A person seeking to accurately understand his world with critical and scientific eyes does not at the same time uncritically force science to accomodate his long held precious beliefs inherited from his uninformed but well meaning parents. This new religion is simply masquarading as scientific.
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  frankiespeakin

  PP,
  

  A person seeking to accurately understand his world with critical and scientific eyes does not at the same time uncritically force science to accomodate his long held precious beliefs inherited from his uninformed but well meaning parents. This new religion is simply masquarading as scientific.

  To tell you the truth, I didn't see where in that essay he was using science to accommodate His religious beliefs.I don't know where you got that idea from?

  I think to be more accurate, this interpretation of Genesis is accommodating to what science is bringing to our attention about evolution. It looks a death as not something evil, which I tend to agree, since evolution needs death to accomplish its handy work.

  I particularly liked his explanation what the tree of knowledge of good and bad stood for. I thought it was pretty insightful. As Jehovah's Witnesses we were always taught eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and bad, was something evil.

  Deep down I always felt that it wasn't an evil thing that was being portrayed by the tree, or that the serpent lied.
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  Faraon

  What about mankind being created from the soil?

  You mean to tell me that apes were made from soil first?
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  peacefulpete

  "I think ... this interpretation of Genesis is accommodating to what science is bringing to our attention about evolution.

  I particularly liked his explanation what the tree of knowledge of good and bad stood for. I thought it was pretty insightful.

  Deep down I always felt that it wasn't an evil thing that was being portrayed by the tree, or that the serpent lied."

  Science is being misused to interpret a favorite religious myth rather than provide an unbiased rationally founded explanation of human origins.