Critique of evolution

[Rodion]

My answer to evolution is reposted from here: https://christisking.cc/threads/orthodox-resources-against-pseudo-evolution.391/page-2#post-12689

I always find it very surprising how many people take evolution as a threat to their faith. It is indeed a dangerous heresy in this sense. However, logically speaking, no scientific theory can challenge God because He can do whatever He wants. He can create us with evolution, or some other mechanism. It doesn't really matter. He created man from dust, which could mean that the dust became the primordial soup that somehow became man. If evolution is true, then it doesn't mean God didn't create man, it just means God created evolution as the process to create man. Just because details are missing from the Bible doesn't mean the details aren't there.

That said, there are serious, secular problems with evolution. Believe it or not, evolution was not accepted by most learned men in Darwin's day because no one could present a working model of how it could work. It was decades later when Gregor Mendel's theory of genetics was discovered, which is a true working model to track phenotypical changes between generations of all lifeforms, and then people starting putting genetics with evolution as a working model, and that is what convinced millions.

However, most people have terrible reasoning and logic, because as explained above evolution does nothing to invalidate God or Genesis, but I think people subconsciously wanted a reason not to believe in God so they could indulge in their sins. Even if God created man through some primate ancestor, it still doesn't change the fact that God controlled evolution to create man. It doesn't mean that evolution can happen without God, as the random chance theory has such low odds of being true it takes infinitely more faith to believe we are here due to luck than purpose.

So on one hand, I cannot understand why people care about evolution, and yet on the other hand, because so many people have used evolution as an excuse to sin, I can see why Christians have come to hate it. I pray that people will someday become enlightened enough to understand human theories as nothing more than guesswork to the mechanisms of God's creation.



This is another trap I see everyone fall into. People constantly forget that time for God is nothing like time for humans. It says so right in Proverbs 90,

Lord, you have been our dwelling place[a]
in all generations.
2 Before the mountains were brought forth,
or ever you had formed the earth and the world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
3 You return man to dust
and say, “Return, O children of man!”[b]
4 For a thousand years in your sight
are but as yesterday when it is past,
or as a watch in the night.
5 You sweep them away as with a flood; they are like a dream,
like grass that is renewed in the morning:
6 in the morning it flourishes and is renewed;
in the evening it fades and withers.

So a thousand years to God is like a day to us. This also logically means the opposite must be true, even one day to God can feel like a thousand years. Hence why the Apostle Paul said so.

Thus the 7 day creation story is no where near the kinds of days we picture. A day to God could be a trillion+ years. Time is totally mailable to the Lord and he plays with it the same way an artist can arrange colors on a canvass to form a picture.

Since God exists outside of time, it therefore follows there are no contradictions for God, because the law of non-contradiction states someone or something cannot be in two places at once, i.e. they cannot be in two places at the same time. Yet since God exists everywhere, independently of time, it therefore logically follows that there are no contradictions for God, and All things are possible with God, which is why Jesus taught so.

Hence it is impossible for any scientific theory to disprove God, since we can only disprove things with contradictions, which cannot exist for God as everything is possible for God. Therefore if mankind's scientific theories do not match up to the Bible, it is because our scientific theories are incomplete and do not (and probably never will) understand the extent and capabilities of God.

If people were perfectly logical, they'd understand this and there would be a lot less sin and apostasy in this world. But since they are not, they must be protected from complicated theories which serve to confuse and damn others. This is a fairly compelling argument against free speech, by the way - if men are unable to understand complex ideas on their own without risking themselves to damnation, it means it is necessary to provide them with some means to protect them from falsehoods. That 'something' is obviously the Church, who has always had sensible limits on public discourse to protect the foolhardy public from reaching erroneous and dangerous conclusions.

I respectfully disagree, I think theistic evolution has huge problems and implications. Death before the fall being a huge one.

Why I Became a Creationist. Seraphim Hamilton

Despite occasional claims to the contrary, the Church has always confessed the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, not only in doctrinal matters, but in historical details as well. St. Augustine, for example, says that if he finds what looks to be a contradiction, he assumes that he has either...

orthochristian.com

This is a good article on the topic from Seraphim Hamilton, which I think may have already been posted on one of the threads here

 

[Samseau]

Death before the fall being a huge one.

There is nothing to support immortality for animals in the creation story; furthermore why would Adam and Eve need to eat if there was no "death," or how could they eat if they could not kill anything? They didn't eat meat?

Universal immortality sounds like make-believe.

 

[Iacobus]

There is nothing to support immortality for animals in the creation story; furthermore why would Adam and Eve need to eat if there was no "death," or how could the eat if they could not kill anything? They didn't eat meat?

Universal immortality sounds like make-believe.

From what I understand it is agreed among the Church Fathers that Adam and Eve did not kill or eat meat prior to the fall, nor did animals eat each other. This is why there are primarily allusions to fruit in the garden, which is a food source that can be partaken of without killing or death.

St. John Damascene:

Some have imagined Paradise to have been material, while others have imagined it to have been spiritual. However, it seems to me that, just as man was created both sensitive and intellectual, so did this most sacred domain of his have the twofold aspect of being perceptible both to the senses and to the mind. For, while in his body he dwelt in this most sacred and superbly beautiful place, as we have related, spiritually he resided in a loftier and far more beautiful place. There he had the indwelling God as a dwelling place and wore Him as a glorious garment. He was wrapped about with His grace, and, like some one of the angels, he rejoiced in the enjoyment of that one most sweet fruit which is the contemplation of God, and by this he was nourished. Now, this is indeed what is fittingly called the tree of life, for the sweetness of Divine contemplation communicates a life uninterrupted by death to them that partake of it.

St. Symeon the New Theologian (+ Fr. Seraphim Rose commentary):

St. Symeon the New Theologian is also very explicit that the material creation—and not just Paradise—before Adam's fall was incorrupt
and without death.* As we saw earlier, he writes that Adam was originally "placed by the Creator God as an immortal king over an incorrupt world, not only over Paradise, but also over the whole creation which was under the heavens." In the same Homily he goes on to say that, after Adam's transgression,

"God did not curse Paradise ... but He cursed only the whole rest of the earth, which also was incorrupt and brought forth everything by itself.... And thus it was fitting in all justice for the one who had become corrupt and mortal by reason of the transgression of the commandment, to live upon the corruptible earth and eat corruptible food… Then also all creatures, when they saw that Adam was banished from Paradise, no longer wished to submit to him, the criminal.... But God restrained all these creatures by His power, and in His compassion and goodness He did not allow them immediately to strive against man, and He commanded that the creation should remain in submission to him, and having become corrupt, should serve corrupt man for whom it had been created.

Do you see that this whole creation in the beginning was incorrupt and was created by God in the manner of Paradise? But later it was subjected by God to corruption, and submitted to the vanity of men."

St. Basil (+ Fr. Seraphim Rose commentary):

Genesis 1:29-30 And God said, Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to every thing that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food. And it was so.

Here we are told that in the beginning, when the earth and all its creatures were still new and man had not fallen, not only men, but even the beasts, were given only green plants for food; the beasts were not meant to be, and in the beginning were not, carnivorous.

Of this St. Basil (On the Origin of Man) says:

Let the Church neglect nothing: everything is a law. God did not say: "I have given you the fishes for food, I have given you the cattle, the reptiles, the quadrupeds." It is not for this that He created, says the Scripture. In fact, the first legislation allowed the use of fruits, for we were still judged worthy of Paradise.

What is the mystery which is concealed for you under this? To you, to the wild animals and the birds, says the Scripture, fruits, vegetation, and herbs (are given). We see, however, many wild animals who do not eat fruits. What fruit does the panther accept to nourish itself? What fruit can the lion satisfy himself with?

Nevertheless, these beings, submitting to the law of nature, were nourished by fruits. But when man changed his way of life and departed from the limit which had been assigned him, the Lord, after the Flood, knowing that men were wasteful, allowed them the use of all foods: "Eat all that in the same way as edible plants" (Gen. 9:3). By this allowance, the other animals also received the liberty to eat them.

Since then the lion is a carnivore, since then also vultures watch for carrion. For the vultures were not yet looking over the earth at the very moment when the animals were born; in fact, nothing of what had received designation or existence had yet died so that the vultures might eat them. Nature had not yet divided, for it was in all its freshness; hunters did not capture, for such was not yet the practice of men; the beasts, for their part, did not yet tear their prey, for they were not carnivores. But all followed the way of the swans, and all grazed on the grass of the meadow.... Such was the first creation, and such will be the restoration after
this. Man will return to his ancient constitution in rejecting malice, a life weighed down with cares, the slavery of the soul with regard to daily worries. When he has renounced all this, he will return to that paradisal life which was not enslaved to the passions of the flesh, which is free, the life of closeness to God, a partaker of the life of the angels.

I also found this which isn't totally relevant but is some interesting info:

Man’s condition before the Fall involved creation in grace, participating in the Divine Energies but not Essence, with the potential for deification. Adam and Eve were “conditionally immortal.” Their bodily existence did not have according to the Fathers the fallen coarser aspects of physical corporeality today. Human beings before the Fall did not experience “irrational desire” for pleasures, finding their pleasure in God. Direct relation with “the most simple and imageless essences of created beings” was possible, without the mediation of imagination, according to St. Maximus the Confessor.

Originally the Cosmos did not involve carnivority, or perishable and obnoxious fruits and plants or creatures. Animals were given plants to eat before the Fall. Decay and death were not present. As Abbot Damascene summarizes from patristic commentaries on Genesis, “the fossil record must be placed, historically, after the fall of man.”

The Fall, as St. Gregory of Nyssa indicated, involved the mind like a mirror receiving the image of formless matter instead of reflecting God as before. In effect, the result was an objectification of self and of the world and others, a “stripping of grace” or spiritual death, an inclination toward sin in fallen human nature. This made man subject to physical death, in the separation of soul from body. Sexual passion and procreation also emerged after the Fall. If Adam and Eve had not fallen, God would have provided other means for procreation, the Fathers wrote.

The Fathers indicate eschatological connections between man’s pre-fallen state, and the state of man and the cosmos to come with Christ’s Second Coming and the general resurrection. There will be both restoration to Paradise and even further fulfillment in deification then, except for those who have cut themselves off from grace because of wicked selfish lives on earth. The latter will experience God’s love then as a burning fire because of not learning to participate in His love during their embodied life in the here-and-now on earth. That involves the mystery of the freedom that God has granted to men. That inextricably relates to the redemption of human beings by Jesus Christ, as seen in the salvation of the Wise Thief on the Cross, and of the rescue of Adam and Eve from Hades on Holy Saturday. It also involves the Church’s sense of theodicy, that suffering and death are not to God’s blame (as some such as Ivan Karamazov blasphemously would aver) but rather are signs of God’s mercy, leading man towards redemption in deification through Jesus Christ, in the divine energies of the Holy Spirit.

Grounded in the Beginning: Father Seraphim Rose and the Patristic View of Creation. A.K. Paul Siewers

The patristic teaching on Creation does not fit comfortably with today’s efforts in liberal religious circles to synthesize secular accounts of evolution and “non-intelligent design” with “theistic evolution,” let alone a Deistic view.

orthochristian.com

Still waiting on a reprint of Fr. Seraphim Rose's book on Genesis, all I have is a poorly scanned PDF which is hard to read.

 

[Samseau]

From what I understand it is agreed among the Church Fathers that Adam and Eve did not kill or eat meat prior to the fall, nor did animals eat each other. This is why there are primarily allusions to fruit in the garden, which is a food source that can be partaken of without killing or death.

St. John Damascene:



St. Symeon the New Theologian (+ Fr. Seraphim Rose commentary):



St. Basil (+ Fr. Seraphim Rose commentary):



I also found this which isn't totally relevant but is some interesting info:

Grounded in the Beginning: Father Seraphim Rose and the Patristic View of Creation. A.K. Paul Siewers

The patristic teaching on Creation does not fit comfortably with today’s efforts in liberal religious circles to synthesize secular accounts of evolution and “non-intelligent design” with “theistic evolution,” let alone a Deistic view.

orthochristian.com

Still waiting on a reprint of Fr. Seraphim Rose's book on Genesis, all I have is a poorly scanned PDF which is hard to read.

Even if we accept that everything ate plants for food, it still does not support universal immorality for all of creation.

 

[Iacobus]

Even if we accept that everything ate plants for food, it still does not support universal immorality for all of creation.

That's true, I'm not exactly trying to prove any point per se, moreso trying to educate myself on the topic using the contention as a springboard for research.

I recall being exposed to the idea that there is a direct causal relationship between sin, and death/entropy/decay, and therefore that death/entropy/decay could not have been present in God's creation before sin entered the world as a consequence of the fall. Probably heard it from Dyer or Fr. Seraphim but need to do more research for info from Church Fathers. Obviously St. Paul makes this connection but maybe it can't necessarily be argued that he meant it in such a strong & literal philosophical sense.

Creation and Evolution: New book set from priest-geologist to be published in English—help the effort

Archpriest Constantine Bufeev, a Russian geologist and Orthodox priest, spent more than 20 years researching the topic and writing three substantial volumes that examine the Creation vs. evolution debate from the point of view of theology, philosophy, and science.

orthochristian.com

I hope this gets published in English one day too... it's really tragic that our libraries are deprived of modern Orthodox examinations of Creationism & evolution.

 

[Samseau]

That's true, I'm not exactly trying to prove any point per se, moreso trying to educate myself on the topic using the contention as a springboard for research.

I recall being exposed to the idea that there is a direct causal relationship between sin, and death/entropy/decay, and therefore that death/entropy/decay could not have been present in God's creation before sin entered the world as a consequence of the fall. Probably heard it from Dyer or Fr. Seraphim but need to do more research for info from Church Fathers. Obviously St. Paul makes this connection but maybe it can't necessarily be argued that he meant it in such a strong & literal philosophical sense.

Creation and Evolution: New book set from priest-geologist to be published in English—help the effort

Archpriest Constantine Bufeev, a Russian geologist and Orthodox priest, spent more than 20 years researching the topic and writing three substantial volumes that examine the Creation vs. evolution debate from the point of view of theology, philosophy, and science.

orthochristian.com

I hope this gets published in English one day too... it's really tragic that our libraries are deprived of modern Orthodox examinations of Creationism & evolution.

How can sin exist for things without free will, such as animals?

 

[Iacobus]

How can sin exist for things without free will, such as animals?

The argument would be that man's sin stained and corrupted all of creation including animals, not that animals themselves sinned.

 

[Psiman]

From what I understand it is agreed among the Church Fathers that Adam and Eve did not kill or eat meat prior to the fall, nor did animals eat each other. This is why there are primarily allusions to fruit in the garden, which is a food source that can be partaken of without killing or death.

Fruit contains seed.