Macro-evolution is absolutely incompatible with Christian Doctrine

====== 1: Six Days === My opponent claims that it is impossible to not take Genesis literally, because "Christian doctrine represents an objective reality and absolute truth." Not only has my opponent made this claim without supporting it at all, simply assuming that every reader already agrees with him, but even most Christians do not view The Bible as absolute truth. Less than half of Christians believe that the Bible is to be taken literally, yet my opponent has taken the minority position and claimed that his position is right because it is absolute truth by God's authority. When did God ever say every word of the bible was literal? In fact, it seems likely that the bible was not meant to be literally true, which is why there are minor inconsistencies in the Bible. Minor inconsistencies are no problem if we don't assume that everything in the bible is word for word true, but even the smallest inconsistency is a problem if we take the bible as an literal work of absolute truth. Lacking a statement from God about this matter, it seems the only authorities who have actually made their positions on the issue clear are church leaders. As I've noted previously, Catholicism has openly accepted evolution as a valid theory, and have noted that Genesis is symbolic rather than literal. Why is their viewpoint invalid? Because someone from some other group has claimed that the bible is literal, on the absolute authoprity of God? It's really too bad we don't have God's testimony on the issue - the Catholic church could also claim that their position has absolute divine authority. We have no reason to believe my opponent's claim of his specific interpretation having divine authority backing it up. My opponent claims "Since we know that the Bible is God's revelation to man and our final authority on objective reality and absolute truth, anything that contradicts the Bible must necessarily be rejected as false. Any teaching that contradicts the Word of God must be regarded as false," but we don't know that the bible is what he says it is. Many christians do not believe that. Perhaps the doctrine of his specific church claims that, but many other Christian doctrines do not say that the Bible is the authority on objective reality. You'll note that there are many different doctrines in Christianity. However, my opponent seems to be referring to "Christian doctrine" as one specific thing. The only sensible way to define this is by calling "christian doctrine" the necessary doctrines one must hold in order to be a Christian. This seems to be as brief a doctrine as follows: "Jesus died on the cross for the sins of humanity." There's very little else that would be in a specific thing called "Christian doctrine." We cannot include "the Bible is absolute truth" because that is only a position SOME christian groups hold to be true. That would be a Southern Baptist doctrine, and a doctrine of whatever other groups consider the bible to be absolute truth. My points here stand - my opponent has simply claimed that non-literal interpretations are wrong, and he has claimed that divine authority agrees with him on this issue, but he has failed to produce any proof for his bold claim. ====== 2: Order of Events === Note that the important part of this point is already dealt with in my response to point #1. However, I did make a side-point that my opponent is now challenging. I claimed that macroevolution does not dictate a specific order of events. This is true. The theory of macroevolution is simply the theory that there is a system by which speciation can take place, and that system acting out has led to the current biological diversity. Claiming that macroevolution dictates a specific order of events is like saying "That apple over there is going to fall towards the earth when I let go of it" is part of gravitational theory. Application of gravitational theory would indeed lead to the conclusion that the apple will fall toward Earth, but "that apple will fall toward earth" is not a tenet of gravitational theory. My opponent also brings up the fossil record, which works to support macroevolution. This is like the observations we have made of things falling. While it's true that those observations supported gravity, that does not mean that those observations are actually part of gravitational theories - they are simply observations that are in line with gravitational theories. ====== 3: Death === Once again, the point about a non-literal bible stands. See #1. But in side-narguments, the order of events is not described in macro-evolution theory, it is described in other fields of science. Macroevolution is ONLY the PROCESS by which speciation occurs. It isn't the timeline of such speciation events. While the potential falsehood of these timelines would take away much of the support we have for evolution, it would not disprove evolution, since evolution is only a process. A person might not be justified in believing evolution if this happened, but it wouldn't be incompatible with even a literal interpretation of the bible in this sense. But like I said last round, and my opponent ignored completely, the death which came into the world with the fall of man was a spiritual death, the type of death we earn through sin (hypothetical non-sinners still die biological deaths, they just go to heaven, as any sinner who has had their sins taken from by Jesus does). ====== 4: Sacrifice on the Cross === As humans, people die. This is a simple fact. As sinners, people die a spiritual death in the form of separation from God for eternity. In the Old Testament, it seemed that God required a sacrifice to appease his justice, and people sacrificed animals to him. This may or may not have been an adequate - I don't recall God ever telling us whether it was or not. Heck, perhaps it's the case that God accepted sacrifices of physical lives as payment for the well-being of spiritual lives. In any case, it is not contradictory to believe that Humans die as part of nature and that Jesus died on the cross for our sins. Also, I will have you note that Evolution makes no claim about whether death exists necessarily for all life. ====== 5: Ark === My opponent first brought up this point as a supposed contradiction between Christian doctrine and Evolution. Note that the argument I gave in point 1 is still valid here - many Christians do not see the Bible, especially Genesis, as being literally true. But note that I gave two possiblities to reconcile even a LITERAL view of Genesis with Evolution in this regard. 1. Accelerated microevolution This is likely how many creationists try to explain the biodiversity we have gained in only the past few thousand years since the Ark. While it's often used by creationists, it is NOT an explanation that contradicts macroevolution, so I have shown that a literal view of Genesis and Macroevolution do not contradict on the point of the Ark. 2. More biodiversity on the Ark than we thought This is the only other explanation a non-evolutionist can use. Once again, this expanation does NOT contradict macroevolution as my opponent claims it does. Until next round.