Evolution and God

However, I would have to say that my opponent has also failed to make his case, and in fact seems to be arguing a very different topic than the one he himself originally submitted. He has also failed to address the objections I have raised, especially in the last round. For instance, his response regarding a literal reading of the Book of Genesis gives reasons as to why his particular denomination chooses to require this sort of interpretation, but does not even begin to deal with the problems that result from a literal reading of the book. It's fine to say that "we're going to make a literal interpretation here, because the original language itself is literal" (really? Hebrew doesn't allow for allegory at ALL? ), but if such a reading leads one into interpretations which are very unlikely or even logically impossible, then there is something wrong with it. But the key failing in my opponent's argument with respect to the topic at hand is as shown in the following, from his remarks in this round: "Returning to the scientific side, despite the long, drawn out response, it could have been much more concise. Even then, it didn't contradict the possibility that if God created the first life, that He couldn't manipulate it. This means that we can question the main engine of evolution, that being natural selection, which does occur, if you ask me, to a limited extent. " Once again, we are NOT, per my opponent's opening remarks and his later clarification of them, debating whether or not the creationist viewpoint is POSSIBLY correct, or even likely. The topic of this debate is whether or not one can "believe in" the evolutionary model and at the same time believe in God. The above argument says nothing at all about this. Clearly, if one believes in a truly omnipotent God, God could have manipulated the "main engine of evolution. " It is also POSSIBLE that this God actually created the entire universe, including all of us, our memories, and all the preceding debate here, ten seconds ago; we have no way of knowing otherwise. And it is also possible that said God would have simply created the universe with the laws we know it to exist, and "let nature take its course" in evolving life. That's the definition of "omnipotent" - literally ANYTHING is possible, and so this sort of argument says nothing either way. It is meaningless. This also makes the following additional argument meaningless within the context of this subject: "In closing, with no way to distinguish whether or not a supernatural being has worked upon this universe in its Creation, without the use of a time machine, which I assume you don't have one, we cannot say that evolution would allow the existence of a supernatural being. This is because of the previously noted inabilites of scientific testing, which can only test the natural world. You have to decide if it is natural OR supernatural selection, they are mutually exclusive engines. " The first part of this, IF we were actually discussing evolution vs. creationism, is actually a reason NOT to believe in creation by a supernatural being. Since we CANNOT distinguish the workings of such a supernatural influence on the development of the universe, why suppose one? Occam's Razor would suggest that we should not introduce such entities where they are not required by the evidence. However, we are, again, simply debating whether or not one can simultaneously believe in both God and evolution, and the arguments made to this point show that not only is this possible, it is actually the preferable form of belief. The observed evidence suggests that evolution has taken place, and we have very consistent and reasonable models to explain how this would have happened. We further might, if we are so inclined, believe in a God who would have the wisdom and power to set all of that into motion in the first place. The ONLY thing that might stand in the way of believing in both is a requirement that we also accept a literal reading of the Book of Genesis - but it has been shown why this is not simply unnecessary, but actually problematic. To do so raises a considerable number of other problems, not the least of which is that it basically requires belief in a God who is deceitful on a literally cosmic scale. Therefore, it has been amply shown that simultaneous belief in God is not only possible but preferable, as is further evidenced by the stated beliefs of the huge majority of the world's Christian population.