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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
Date:         Tue, 26 Jan 1993 19:54:13 EST
From:         Dan Harling <harling@ROADRUNNER.PICTEL.COM>
Subject:      Re: Evolution and other things

> Date: 26 Jan 1993 17:25:34 -0700 (MST)
> From: Usenet/Netnews Moderator <FOCMCB@asuvm.inre.asu.edu>
> Subject: Re: Evolution and other things
> To: Multiple recipients of list CHRISTIA <CHRISTIA@asuvm.inre.asu.edu>
>
> ----------------------------Original message----------------------------
> >Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia
> >From: nhn@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Nicholas Hawthorn)
> >Subject: Re: Evolution and other things
> >Organization: University of Auckland, New Zealand.
> >Date: 26 Jan 1993 10:35:47 +0000 (GMT)
>
> I think that even if belief in evolution does little harm to a Christian it
> is a great comfort to unbelievers.

...albeit a false sense of comfort, for even if true, the conclusions
commonly drawn do not follow.  See below.


> It means that the Earth is exceedingly old...

True.


> and that the Flood is a myth,

Huh?  I don't see that.  There may even be geological evidence of the
Flood, albeit on a local scale (i.e., encompassing the parts of the
world that were known to mankind at that time) rather than a global
scale.


> and makes it easy to believe that the return
> of the Lord Jesus Christ is also nonsense.  If one believes that the Earth
> was created directly by God about 6000 years ago, and that all men were
> destroyed by the Flood about 4000 years ago, the imminent return of Christ
> starts to seem quite believable.
> (2 Peter 3 is relevant here).

"But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is
like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day."

I still don't see what the "young Earth" theory has to say about
Christ's return.  Whether six thousand years or six billion is
irrelevant to Christ's return.


> Communism and Humanism are two philosophies built on evolution.  Neither of
> them could be built on the Bible's account of creation.

This is true: if they were based on the Bible's account of creation,
they would have had a realistic understanding of our relationship to
God, and of our own sinful nature.  However, these facts are not
inextricably linked to the use of the Genesis account of creation like
a newspaper article.  Short of one's assumptions as to how the Genesis
account of creation is *supposed* to be read, there is no contradiction
in the belief that God used his universe's own laws to bring about his
decrees.

The Genesis account specifies the "what" and the "why," but it gives
few if any details about the "how."  That is because the "how" is
unimportant to the point of the story.


> I think that belief in evolution has very harmful effects, on individuals
> (especially on unbelievers, perhaps on Christians as well) and on whole
> societies.  I think the effects are long term rather than immediate and
> practical.

It is the lack of faith in God that leads to these detrimental
effects.  This lack of faith results in people viewing the universe
with the assumption that God does not exist.  The fact that evolution
(and every other scientific theory) *can* be viewed in that light says
not that the theory is bad, but that the empiricist assumptions are
bad.
____________________________________________________________________________
Daniel A. Harling                        (harling@pictel.com)
PictureTel Corp.             Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of
Peabody, MA  01960                   PictureTel Corp. (so there!)
Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU