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theartistformerlyknownas faithfull
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 5

Posted 7/5/2001 6:31 AM (GMT -6)

does anyone agree with evolution and if so is it compatible with the open view theism?

Paul

Edited by - theartistformerlyknownas faithfull on 07/05/2001 12:13:15 PM

GregBoyd
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 1818

Posted 7/6/2001 9:06 AM (GMT -6)

The open view is very compatible with evolution, but certainly doesn't require it. I recently heard a lecture from a professor of biology at Calvin College (!) who presented an intriguing idea of how God created the world with innate creative potencies such that the outcome was not meticulously foreknown. Though he didn't even know what "open theism" was, he was espousing it in combination with an evolutionary cosmology.

For myself, I am not sure whether God used evolution or not in creating the variety of animals, and humans, we see now in the world. If he did, I have to suspect it got corrupted by demonic influences, for it is filled with violence. From what I read of Genesis 1, God's original design was to have a vegetarian, peace-filled kingdom (Gen 1:31). Hence, I cannot presently accept that the "survival of the fittest" program was God's design. This is partly why I suspect that the creation event in Genesis 1:2ff. is a second restorational creation. The first became "formless and void" when God judged it, just as he later did with the flood and shall do one last time before establishing "a new heaven and a new earth". This is what is known as "the gap theory."

Doc

Triskal
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 198

Posted 7/7/2001 4:19 PM (GMT -6)

Doc,
could you explain what you mean by a second restorational creation? Also, could you give some reasoning and biblical basis for it?

Thanks,
Matt

n/a
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 218

Posted 7/9/2001 8:31 AM (GMT -6)

Hey matt!a second restorational creation I think is an idea Greg used in God at war,here I will attempt to horribly paraphrase

.
Basically before the humans inhabited earth there was a spiriutal warfare going on,God took the remenants of the war and restored the earth for adam(man)to live in
this Greg feels explains the gap between genesis 1 and 2 and also the talk about the blackness being over the waters and the spirit wiping it away I think are supposed to be taken as metephors.Doc I hope I did your work a little justice,I only read the book once.take care matt keep bothering greg if my answer did not do you justice
blessings
Paul

"all the people at the zoo will treat you real nice and respectable like penguin"

Pseudo-Intellectual
Registered Member

Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 58

Posted 7/17/2001 9:35 AM (GMT -6)

quote:

The open view is very compatible with evolution, but certainly doesn't require it. I recently heard a lecture from a professor of biology at Calvin College (!) who presented an intriguing idea of how God created the world with innate creative potencies such that the outcome was not meticulously foreknown. Though he didn't even know what "open theism" was, he was espousing it in combination with an evolutionary cosmology.
Doc

Doc, a while ago on TV i saw this really cool comupter simulation someone came up with to test how natural sellection works. It seemed like evolution inherintly deals with chance. In the program a virtual orginism was created consisting of two cubes that met at a joint. these two cubes could only wiggle on that hinged joint. The test for survival was to learn to move from point A to point B, about 10 times the leanght of the origional virtual orginism. The way that the program worked was that each generation would produce then ofspring. these ofspring would have only one variosion from its parent. so in the second geration for example would have one virtual orginism with three cubes, another would simply change the width or leangth of one of the cubes, etc. after each generation the programer would test to see if they could make it from point A to B. the two or three that got the clostest would survive and the rest would get deleted. The combinations of variables created some interesting and surprising results that trumpet sound were not forknown by the programer! Some of them became walking organisms, some of them rolled their way to point be. One of them was simply a stack of 10 or so cubes each linked to the other. Since the program only said that it had to get from point a to b and it didn't say how this virtual organism simply wiggled until it tipped itself over and landed at point b. pretty cool huh?

dudechild

"If there is no God, who pops up the next Kleenex?" -Art Hoppe

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