Evolution and The Bible are incompatible

This talk of foolishness is not particularly relevant, but it is fun. The simple fact of the matter is one cannot construct an argument around what my opponent may call, "the principle of foolishness. " That is to say, the probability of any given thing is causally increased by any increase in foolishness. His position seems to be that because his view seems foolish his position is therefore correct - the Bible does, after all, absent its respective context, say that God uses the foolish things to shame the wise. As already noted, his position would have to be foolish for this principle to apply. But irrespective of the foolishness of such a position, the principle is fundamentally wrong. There are innumerable foolish positions, all of which cannot be true simultaneously. The amount of foolish, false propositions far outweighs the amount of foolish, true propositions. Foolishness is simply not an accurate indicator of truth or the probability thereof. Contention One: The Language Used In this debate I have shown that the Bible uses a very neat 7-day literary motif in which all the days parallel from "formless" and "empty to "form" and "filling. " Moreover, the language employed is rhythmic, with the phrase tohu wa-bohu. Parallelism is an ancient Hebraic poetry form and the 7-day motif was shared by many Ancient Near East creation story predecessors. Genesis 1 refers exclusively to God as Elohim while chapter 2 refers exclusively to God as Yahweh Elohim. The genealogy in Genesis with its very long ages is so strikingly similar to the ancient king's list that predate it by thousands of years that no thinking Hebrew could miss the resemblance. Same with the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of the flood. The internal evidence and external evidence in and surrounding the Genesis creation stories point to something very clear, they are not meant to be taken has literal, historical accounts. Nothing needs to be resolved in terms of the age of the earth and textual inconsistencies if I am right. My opponent, on the other hand, has decided to bite the bullet and suggest that God's glory-light can reasonably be inferred as the source of light in Genesis and, it seems, this glory-light was turned off and on to symbolize morning and night. We have to infer, too, that this glory-light produced the correct amount of heat to sustain the already created life and that it produced the energy required for photosynthesis. Even worse though, is that this glory-light could not have turned ALL the way off, as then there would be no heat and the earth would suffer an ice age. Perhaps we have a new theory percolating beneath the surface of this discussion. As you can see, far too many inferences are required for this theory to work. In fact, the only reason one posits this theory is reconcile textual inconsistencies if Genesis is literal - not because it seems likely or is reasonable. Thus, it seems, it is totally ad hoc. Contention Two: Adam and Eve The basic premise of my opponent's argument is: the prerequisite to being figurative is that we must know all that it means. This is disingenuous and decidedly false. We have good evidence for believing that Genesis was not written as a historically literal account - whether it is clear what it means when we read it that way notwithstanding. If this was truly a prerequisite, then we must also conclude that the book of Revelation is literal, since, of course, we do not know all that it means in a figurative sense and we can clearly understand it in a literal one - as bizarre as literal reading may be. As already stated, it is a basic illogical fallacy to assume the truth of a bad theory simply because of the absence of a compelling alternative. As I have already stated also, I think Genesis has many functions as a figurative enterprise, namely to combat other preexisting myths and to give truths about our value in God's eyes. Contention Three: The Jewish Workweek My opponent's argument is one from silence. If the earth is really old then God would have told us. .. This is far too presumptuous even among humans. Can you really assume what it is that God would have done? Are you like Job, thinking you know the mind of God? Moreover, I think it is pretty easy to see that telling the Jews that the earth is actually billions of years old and that we evolved from lower species would have been both irrelevant, insubstantial and distracting from his purpose. The only reason he would tell them this is if we presuppose from the beginning that Genesis is a literal, historical recounting - but that begs the question. (2) Evolution and the Bible are probably compatible I understand fully that if God were confined to only one set of physical laws and constants and he wanted to instantaneously create the universe and human life on a planet called earth shortly thereafter, he would have to create the universe in a way that, to us, would appear old. But this presupposes that an omnipotent God is confined to making specific physical laws and constants. My argument is that we have no good reasons for believing that an omnipotent God would not create a universe where, for instance, the light of stars travelled much faster or the stars were much closer and their heat was much less. Certainly God is not confined to ONLY making a universe that must appear old. Even I could think of possible universes that, in creating them, would not require the appearance of age. (3) Evolution is supported by the Bible My opponent is not understanding my point about the wine. My point is that there is a relevent difference between creating wine and creating the universe out of nothing. By virtue of miraculously turning water into wine, Jesus is taking the ontological properties of one thing and changing them into another. That means that the wine would have to reflect processes that never ACTUALLY occurred. However, the universe, being created out of literally nothing at all, does not require an ontological property change and thus need not reflect processes that never actually occurred. There is no good reasons for thinking that an omnipotent God, with literally no restrictions, would be bound or obliged to create a universe that seemed or required more age than it possessed. As it stands, a non-literal reading of Genesis fits the evidence best and thus allows for Evolution and the Bible to coexist in harmony. Thank you, InquireTruth