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[–] 1 pt (edited )

I think it's interesting that people see evolution and creationism as diametric. Take the scattering of Israel for example, something that was prophesied by Isaiah and Jeremiah. God said he would scatter them, but did he one day instantly transport them to all four corners of the Earth? No. It was done by literal physical process over time. Isaiah also said that they would continue to be scattered every fourth generation because of their continued wickedness, but that also has happened through literal process.

For a story that had at one point been oral tradition and then was written down around the time of Moses, and described in about 10 verses, it's pretty dang close to the scientific record. If you had asked anyone even 300 years ago who didn't believe in that tradition to describe the creation in 10 or so sentences there is no way they would get that close. There is no reason to assume, from the Hebrew, that days in genesis means literal days and it's just as reasonable a translation to say time periods.

The other reason why current evolution should definitely not be at odds with Christian belief is because the nature of the fall further re-enforces that things will obey physical laws, including the nature of man's experience, for better, or for worse, or completely indifferent to you. If changes in the distribution of attributes within a population is expected from physical circumstances then those are the physical circumstances we are going to have. Particularly for something that has no significant weight like the width of a beak, but the doctrine of the fall is that it will even for things that do have weight like human intelligence, mental illness, poverty, and more immediately your own physical death. There is nothing fair about a kid getting cancer but if physical law demands it then it's going to happen. Anyways, that's the Fall, and most Christians should believe in it.

[–] 0 pt

I think it's interesting that people see evolution and creationism as diametric.

In my experience, that has been a minority opinion among Christians and a wider opinion (I'm not sure if it is a majority opinion, but it's larger) among secular people. As said in the video, most Christians who reject evolution qualify that they have issues with macro-evolution, not micro-evolution. I suspect they really mean speciation.

it's pretty dang close to the scientific record.

I think something like that happens more than people like to admit. Sometimes I think of human biodiversity (HBD) as revealing wisdom about human nature under a microscope. For clarity, I'm secular myself. I just think that's neat.