"People who are refusing to study the world around them and instead are clinging to their personal belief in the literal accuracy of Genesis are doing exactly that - making an idol of their personal cherished ideas."

Wow. Just....wow!

If chance be the father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear “state of emergency,” “sniper kills 10,” “troops on rampage,” “whites go looting,” and “bomb blasts school,” it is but the sound of man worshipping his creator.


gcw

bevin said that, not me...

Come on guys, we've managed to keep the conversation civil so far and make it about the issues without slinging personal attacks and characterising others' perspectives as evil. Let's aim to keep it that way. Looking at the world around us we see both good and evil - a mother and child as well as a murderer. The things we see around us contains some of God and some of Satan, some of Eden and some of the Fall.

In a view of origins that involves evolution, sin would enter at the time of the Fall - that is, when it became possible for humans to choose between good and evil (the tree of knowledge). I tried to outline such a perspective - not one I subscribe to, but one I thought it was worth describing - the other day, and it received about the response I thought it would. But Rob asked the question about when sin arose... and that's the answer.

See my summary statement in the Strict Literalism thread for the possibility of a way forward in this discussion that doesn't just involve slinging insults at one another and disparaging one another's perspectives.

I know Robert. This program asigns the default name of the poster above you, unless you change it with a quote.

Sorry for the inference. It is a highly revealing statement that I referenced, isn't it? Most revealing.


all the best,


gcw

Quote:

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When, in the evolutionary scheme of things, did sin appear on the scene?

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Let us try to understand the question before we settle on an answer.

First we need to know some things...

(1) Can a newborn human sin?
(2) Can an animal other than a human sin?
(3) Can an inanimate object sin?

/Bevin

I would like to inject a parenthesis here. Perhaps it's already been covered somewhere else, and if so, I'm sorry for any repetition.

Quote:

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Matthew 19:4. And he (Jesus, referring to divorce) answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female...

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Here Jesus appears to support the Genesis account of creation by referring to it. Perhaps opponents of the creation explanation of origins believe that either Jesus was misinformed, or, was being deceitful by supporting Creation.

Some might argue that these verses are fraudulent and were injected by rogue copyists or plagiarists or whatever, but I'd rather stake my beliefs on Jesus’ statements than to someone today looking at old bones and rocks and arguing that life created itself.




As far as sin goes, here's the real question: Which sinned first, atoms or electrons? And, how did they reproduce themselves?

Evil patterns of atoms may be relatively easy to replicate, and propagate, but evil patterns of electrons may be much more easily duplicated and distributed my man. Much more complex would be the replication of electro-chemical patterns of evil thought by artificial means, the recording of human thoughts, that is.

Because these evil patterns of atoms or electrons do not reflect the perfect pattern, they disturb the cosmos by generating of non-harmonic energy. Ultimately, evil patterns of matter/energy must be destroyed in order for harmony to be restored to the universe.

I'm really just having a little fun here, but seriously, if an evil memory is stored, it would probably generate a certain pattern in the storage medium. Someone searching the medium for evil would look for the pattern rather than view every single memory. A memory of an act of rebellion against God by rejecting one of his rules for mankind would generate a pattern characteristic of rebellion.

Of course, God could just delete all acts of evil from everyone's life records and save everyone, no matter what they did during their existence on Earth. Then one could believe and do anything with impunity.

Quote:

---

Let us try to understand the question before we settle on an answer.

First we need to know some things...

(1) Can a newborn human sin?
(2) Can an animal other than a human sin?
(3) Can an inanimate object sin?

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In evolutionary terms, what is sin?