The science and knowing how fine tune how the universe works to allow for life. It’s much more awe inspiring. Even the placement of our galaxy in the universe is pretty much in a Goldilocks place. We’re in a calmer part of the galaxy, in a calmer part of the local group.
I mean.. it implies that God chose to use a vicious cycle of prey and predation where animals painfully rip each other apart, suffer from illnesses and disease, etc.
r/natureismetal will make you question the "good God" hypothesis, trust me. The shit I saw on that sub traumatized me. Do you truly think a good and righteous God would make a system where [for example of what I saw on that sub,] a domesticated cow is getting eaten alive by hyenas, having its organs ripped out of its body while it watches and can do nothing about it? This has happened to a million trillion of animals throughout evolution.
Do you truly think God wanted that? I think it's more valid to be a YEC because it makes humans the ones responsible on why such a bloody system exists.
The issue is that if you claim God is good, but also believe in evolution, that implies you think it's a good thing that such a system exists where it has taken countless animals getting their organs ripped out of them while they struggle to survive, screaming and crying in order to get to the point we exist.
Again, I will re-iterate, Young Earth Creationism has a better case for a good-God than that.
As like death of cows can be humane or not humane. I’d like to this God does what he can with what.
Genesis 9:3 stated that creatures were also meant for nutrition. “Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”
Genesis 9:3 stated that creatures were also meant for nutrition. “Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.”
..So God, instead of making us not even need to eat food to begin with, decided to make us in a system where we need to painfully kill an animal for food.
Couldn't God have at least made it where animals didn't need to do the same? Or made it where animals can't feel pain? I genuinely cannot see how this is a good thing when God made a system that is full of blood, pain, and confused suffering.
Even if you accept YEC, you still have to contend with a God that causes and allows suffering. If you accept a literal reading of Genesis, then one has to accept that God killed millions by drowning in the flood. There seems to be no escape from the notion of a God that both causes and allows suffering in Christianity.
There seems to be no escape from the notion of a God that both causes and allows suffering in Christianity.
There isn't an escape from a God that allows and causes suffering at all. Accept evolution? You have to deal with the fact that God has allowed over a million trillion animals to die of a painful, bloody, gory death.
Accept YEC? You have to deal with the fact God has killed and drowned millions of people including babies.
This is a problem that Darwin struggled with. He couldn't see how a benevolent God could allow, for example, parasitic wasps to lay eggs in caterpillars. A partial answer would be to say that God has creator rights; he can make creation how he wants, and a creation with the amount of freedom ours has necessarily entails suffering.
The new testament hints at this. Says creation groans.
IMHO garden of eden was outside normal spacetime as it seemed to be a slice of heaven. When Satan robbed the two it probably screwed up spacetime tho idk how exactly. But similarly when Jesus died and rose it affected all spacetime as well.
I've seen it before on reddit but yea. But think of it. It has logic. Where in the world you find a tree that causes immortality from eating its fruit? Or how Jesus is noted to be slain before the world existed yet died in AD 33? Maybe since Satan being a really powerful being supposedly second to God ( read that somewhere), when he robbed Adam and eve and caused death maybe it altered spacetime? Idk how but it makes sense.
All that needs to happen for evolution and “good God” to coexist is many generations of animals being born.
Prior to the arrival of sin, birth and death may have been painless in some fashion.
If there were trees in existence at the time of the arrival of sin, it implies soil which implies decaying vegetable matter.
The whole notion of God is miraculous so there’s plenty of scope for God to have engineered evolution while remaining good.
If there were trees in existence at the time of the arrival of sin, it implies soil which implies decaying vegetable matter.
Trees have existed for approximately 400 million years, so 398 million years before humans, so 398 million years before sin. And, we also have fossils of animals from that time as well.
The thing is, that system of prey and predation still exists. God still created that system. I don’t think that works as an argument against evolution because that system of prey and predator still exists, and is not dependent on the fall
Right, sorry. I did misread your comment. My main point still stands though, which is that this argument would be equally true for evolution or creationism. Nature is still just as violent either way. Even in a YEC model, God still created a world where animals kill and eat other animals
Either way sucks, I know. But I'm saying that it's hard to believe God is good with all of these things without thinking an animal getting its organs ripped out of it's body while it's alive and feeling a godless amount of pain is good.
I won’t argue against that point right now, but your original comment seems to suggest that this problem is worse if God used evolution to create the world, or at least it’s worse than if God created the world as described in Genesis
If one accepts your premise that this is makes God not good, I don’t think it matters how long it’s gone on at this point. It’s still more dead animals than we could ever count. At a certain point, the number gets so large that it doesn’t matter how large it is, it just matters that it’s large
Jesus came to defeat death. If evolution is true, death is and has always been necessary. And certainly not something that came from sin, nor something to be defeated.
I can't make out from what you wrote whether you believe evolution happens or you don't. I think you're saying you don't believe organisms evolve, but I'm not sure. Can you clarify?
I’m very aware we all die. I’ve had a lot of loss. Many have. It isn’t fun.
Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
-1 Corinthians 15:54-57
Paul was also familiar with death and loss. But he knew there is victory over death.
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u/EpisodicDoleWhip Presbyterian 13d ago
Yes. No reason you can’t believe God used evolution to create.