If there's a way for UT to delete the post I made: "Something from the SAB," I would ask that he do so, since this really belongs here. Thanks
Sidhe
Does the bible teach evolution?
It appears that way...
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree. -- Genesis 1:11
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. -- Genesis 1:24
(1:11-13) Plants are made on the third day before there was a sun to drive their photosynthetic processes (1:14-19). Notice, though, that God lets "the earth bring forth" the plants, rather than creating them directly.
Gen.1:20-21
"And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good."
God lets "the earth (and waters) bring forth" the plants and animals, rather than create them directly. So maybe the creationists have it all wrong.
But both Luther and Calvin rejected any non-literal interpretation of the creation accounts in Genesis.
At the Reformation the vast authority of Luther was thrown in favour of the literal acceptance of Scripture as the main source of natural science. The allegorical and mystical interpretations of earlier theologians he utterly rejected. "Why," he asks, "should Moses use allegory when he is not speaking of allegorical creatures or of an allegorical world, but of real creatures and of a visible world, which can be seen, felt, and grasped? Moses calls things by their right names, as we ought to do....I hold that the animals took their being at once upon the word of God, as did also the fishes in the sea."
We should take parts of the bible that attempt to explain scientific concepts allegorically because these people were trying to explain scientific concepts in and to a scientifically ignorant world. Plato used allegory in his cave story, and he wasn't talking about allegorical things.--Sidhe
Not less explicit in his adherence to the literal account of creation given in Genesis was Calvin. He warns those who, by taking another view than his own, "basely insult the Creator, to expect a judge who will annihilate them." He insists that all species of animals were created in six days, each made up of an evening and a morning, and that no new species has ever appeared since. He dwells on the production of birds from the water as resting upon certain warrant of Scripture, but adds, "If the question is to be argued on physical grounds, we know that water is more akin to air than the earth is." As to difficulties in the scriptural account of creation, he tells us that God "wished by these to give proofs of his power which should fill us with astonishment."
Man invented the 24-hour day, and the sun wasn't even created until the fourth day. (1:3-5, 14-19) God creates light and separates light from darkness, and day from night, on the first day. Yet he didn't make the light producing objects (the sun and the stars) until the fourth day (1:14-19). And how could there be "the evening and the morning" on the first day if there was no sun to mark them?. Also, didn't God say that a day to Him was as a thousand years--or something to that effect? And new species appear all the time....Then, according to info in the Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_Universe, the Universe is much older than Creationists claim it to be. --Sidhe
Then, of course, we have Gen.1:1 - 2:3. According to the SAB:
The creation account in Genesis 1 conflicts with the order of events that are known to science. In Genesis, the earth is created before light and stars, birds and whales before reptiles and insects, and flowering plants before any animals. The true order of events was just the opposite.
Not to mention different parts of Genesis that have man being created BEFORE plants and animals, conflicting with parts of Genesis that have man being created AFTER plants and animals (Animals--Gen.1:25-27 v. Gen.2:18-19; plants--Gen.1:11-13, 27-31 v. Gen.2:4-7)