Theistic Evolution! :O

I just read an article in which the author says that it will be good for american churches to accept evolution as an act of god.

He later on goes to say that evolution doesn't necessarily mean there is no god & I agree with that, but then he said something that really bothered me.

There are many different ways that an evolution launched by a god might play out (see myTaxonomy of Gods). One possibility for a theistic (God-based) evolution is a story that would look pretty much like what we see in the 4.7 billion-year history of life on earth. See Michael Dowd's version for more. But the image of the creator behind this process looks a little different than the traditional Sunday school image of God, which is God the dollmaker, who molds each species in their final form. Instead the unrolling creation of evolution requires a much larger God, a creator outside of time who unfolds the cosmos and life and mind an on-going process.

Personally and collectively we are defined by our understanding of where we come from. If we believe in a fearful angry-father God, our society will angry and fearful. If we believe in directionless randomness as God, then our society will be directionless. I therefore seek the largest God of possibilities and growth. The God of evolution may not be the optimal God, but it/he is much greater than the dollmaker God of creationism. I'm betting on the bigger God.

I think that the argument of a god of evolution fails to answer the question of who created god.

I also think that to incorporate evolution into christianity is just taking the facts & twisting the interpretation of the religion around them so that the religion still makes sense. It will do more harm than it will do good.

What do you guys think?

Tags: Christianity, Evolution, Q, Theistic

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Permalink Reply by Arcus on May 2, 2011 at 4:14pm

"a creator outside of time"

One dimension down, 3 to go until "He's" completely relegated to the quirks of quantum physics. ;)

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Permalink Reply by Derek on May 2, 2011 at 11:43pm

The notion of a skygod who can pull the strings of natural selection is absurd and completely self refuting.

This would mean that said entity would know in advance that it would take about 4.5 billion years for humanity to evolve. And only then could he send his son on a suicide mission to bronze age Palestine. Why not just create him from scratch if that was the case? What madness.

So we have an all powerful god who guided evolutoin but needed to wait around for billions of years, hoping that the right species of primate would turn up, only to be torn apart in human sacrifice.

Wouldn't a god who created evolution know in advance that his followers would reject it? The whole thing is nonsense.

Evolution is not compatible with deities, full stop, that's my 2 cents.

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Permalink Reply by Derek on May 3, 2011 at 1:22am

I've just thought of something else. Maybe it might be worth pretending that evolution is in fact compatible with theology; just to get it 100% accepted in schools. Sometimes you have to lie to get ahead.

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Permalink Reply by Akshay Bist on May 3, 2011 at 1:32am

I think this comic illustrates what we all think about theistic evolution pretty well -

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