Quote:
Originally Posted by Adino
Hey guys, interesting discussion. I usually by-pass the young earth/old earth/evolution/"how did God create" threads simply because I enjoy the soteriological issues so much more and one only has so much time to devote to pecking away at a keyboard.
Maybe I'll get a chance to join in more next week, but for now I'd like to see some thoughts from anyone who'd care to share concerning the theological implications of the theistic evolution position. An implied world full of death prior to a fall into sin is one issue that would be of interest.
I've also always wondered why the botanical record seems to have been neglected in the whole design debate. Some of the seed dispersal systems of plants are simply amazing.
God bless and keep the posts coming! |
On the subject of design: Have you heard the "mud puddle or pothole argument?"
Look at the shape of a pothole and then imagine lifting the water out of the pothole. Notice how that the pothole appears to have been designed just to hold that exact shape of water?
Of course what we really see is that the water conforms its shape to the available environment - the shape of the prexisting pothole.
Life is like water in that its shapes and forms are adaptable to the environment in which they find themselves. When Europeans first landed on Australia they found a continent with marsupials instead of placental mammals. Yet the marsupials had evolved into biological niches similar to the "shape" of corresponding niches on other continents. The kangaroo was the savannah grazing animal. It had even evolved the facial characteristics and long ears of deer and antelope elswhere. Other animals were named for their mammilian counterparts, the wolf or tiger and so forth.
This adaptability is responsible for the "appearance of design." I accept a fundamental principle that "design" is involved at a very high level in the cosmos. However, I've been disappointed with the Intelligent Design" movement in general. The appraoch that seems to withstand the withering attacks of the anti-religiouys crowd is when we look for purpose and meaning.
Life is malleable. Those lifeforms that are most malleable to changing environments are often the survivors. There is perhaps a lesson to be learned here.
On the subject of death before Adam:
Many YECs insist that based upon
Romans 5:12-14 and
1 Corinthians 15:21-22, that there was no "death" before Adam. They used to say "No Death" and meant just that. Over the last several years however, many have adapted (like water in a pothole) their teaching and now say things like, "
Plants are not alive" and so forth. How a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and "dies" (
John 12:24) is apparently not a question that troubles these guys.
The passage in
1 Corinthians 15 says that:
1. By Adam all die.
2. By Jesus Christ all are made alive.
To follow the "all" to the conclusion that animals die because of Adam, then we must assume that all animals will be resurrected because of Jesus Christ. I guess the cartoon was really correct:
All dogs do go to Heaven!
I can't help but conclude that if the YEC's "death argument" is true, then Jesus Christ died not only for "the elect," and not only "for all men;" but He died for the bacteria, plants, animals and evrything else that has ever been alive on this planet. That takes universalism to an extreme that would offend even most universalists. Crakjak will need to ammend his sig line to include anaerobes!
The fact remains, that the "death" that
Romans 5 discusses came into the world by one
man and was passed upon
all men because
all have sinned. The Scripture never tells us that animals have sinned (neither plants or bacteria), but that men have sinned. The death that was passed on by Adam's sin involved the descendants of Adam and not the other biological organisms on the planet.
Romans 5:12 is important enough to quote in full:
"Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."
We are talking about Adam and his descendants dying here. The idea of a "Spiritual death" or seperation from God is obvious. The idea of physical death may be intended as well, but only for Adam and his descendants.
The world was full of death and dying before Adam. It's just that this death is a part of the natural world. The natural world is obviously important- it's where we live. But the discussion of sin and death that was passed upon "all men" (Greek: anthropos = humans) involves the supernatural as well.
The consequences of sin in the natural world might be that the sinner lives and the saint is killed. This happens all the time and we call it "injustice." However, there is no natural remedy for injustice. We need a supernatural remedy. The same with the stain of sin that each of us bears. There is no natural cure for this. We need a supernatural one.
The fact that the bigger fish eats the smaller fish isn't a consequence of Adam's sin. The fish were not the descendants of Adam. The same holds true for all of the natural deaths in the world, then and now. Paul was concerned only with a discussion of death and sin involving Adam and his descendants.
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