The Theory Of Evolution Is Incompatible With Christianity

[TrainedLogosmotion]

I'm anti-evolution. But I'm stuck on something that I can't articulate in my own head and would appreciate some insight.

I'm curious if there are any saints/elders that talk about why God made humans and 'monkeys' have such similar features? Is it this way perhaps because they're a prototype of humans in his creation mechanism?

Or maybe that they're an example of creatures made in our own image, like how we are made in the image of God? A living analogy so to speak. 'Monkeys' lack higher level 'mind stuff' (language, logic, math, etc.), while as humans we also lack a mysterious set of other high level 'mind stuff' that God possesses. I'm not sure that really works though because we didn't create monkeys...

If we didn't come from them, which I don't think we did, then why do we look like them? What's the purpose if they're is one that is known? What's the Orthodox Christian explanation? What are your thoughts on this?

There must be a reason God created likeness between the 'monkeys' and us in this way. This has always bothered me. I hope this makes sense and someone can enlighten me here.

These types of thoughts cause turmoil in my soul and can arise from something as simple as hearing the sounds of children playing at a playground on the 'monkey' bars and I think to myself "we're just like monkeys".

I feel spiritually uncomfortable with the idea of being 'just another animal', even though I don't believe that I am, it's just that the comparisons are many and I just don't understand why.

 

[get2choppaaa]

I'm anti-evolution. But I'm stuck on something that I can't articulate in my own head and would appreciate some insight.

I'm curious if there are any saints/elders that talk about why God made humans and 'monkeys' have such similar features? Is it this way perhaps because they're a prototype of humans in his creation mechanism?

Or maybe that they're an example of creatures made in our own image, like how we are made in the image of God? A living analogy so to speak. 'Monkeys' lack higher level 'mind stuff' (language, logic, math, etc.), while as humans we also lack a mysterious set of other high level 'mind stuff' that God possesses. I'm not sure that really works though because we didn't create monkeys...

If we didn't come from them, which I don't think we did, then why do we look like them? What's the purpose if they're is one that is known? What's the Orthodox Christian explanation? If there isn't one then what are your thoughts on this?

There must be a reason God created likeness between the 'monkeys' and us in this way. This has always bothered me. I hope this makes sense and someone can enlighten me here.

These types of thoughts cause turmoil in my soul and can arise from something as simple as hearing the sounds of children playing at a playground on the 'monkey' bars and I think to myself "we're just like monkeys".

View attachment 48503

Why do you have to know "why" God made us a certain way and monkey a certain way that is "similar"?

What does it matter?

Who are we to question why God made different species ECT...

God made US in His image. He gave us mastery over the animals and the earth.

Pondering too much on existentialism just detracts you from connection with God.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Why do you have to know "why" God made us a certain way and monkey a certain way that is "similar"?

What does it matter?

Who are we to question why God made different species ECT...

God made US in His image. He gave us mastery over the animals and the earth.

Pondering too much on existentialism just detracts you from connection with God.

Well it matters for me personally because I used to be an athiest/pro-evolutionist, and I have to break alot of those chains still. It's a feeling that I get that is hard to explain.

I don't HAVE to know the answer. I'm just wondering. Like I said it is a spiritual block for me that I need to get through. I'm not demanding an explanation.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm certainly not geared at questioning God as if to poke holes in Creation. I'm just asking for some guidance on this particular topic to help me move forward.

 

[get2choppaaa]

Well it matters for me personally because I used to be an athiest/pro-evolutionist, and I have to break alot of those chains still. It's a feeling that I get that is hard to explain.

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm certainly not geared at questioning God as if to poke holes in Creation. I'm just asking for some guidance on this particular topic to help me move forward.

Its unfinished and published posthumously, but here you go.

Genesis, Creation, and Early Man by Fr. Serphim Rose

An in-depth survey of the Holy Fathers and Patristic sources to discover the ancient Christian teaching on Creation and Evolution.

www.sainthermanmonastery.com

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Its unfinished and published posthumously, but here you go.

Genesis, Creation, and Early Man by Fr. Serphim Rose

An in-depth survey of the Holy Fathers and Patristic sources to discover the ancient Christian teaching on Creation and Evolution.

www.sainthermanmonastery.com

Thank you. Perhaps this is a good place to start.

 

[Wild Something]

Please don't misunderstand me, I'm certainly not geared at questioning God as if to poke holes in Creation. I'm just asking for some guidance on this particular topic to help me move forward.

Regarding the similarities between humans and monkeys, I'm more like to believe in de-evolution than its counterpart.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Regarding the similarities between humans and monkeys, I'm more like to believe in de-evolution than its counterpart.

Hmm. Can you elaborate on what you mean here?

 

[Wild Something]

Hmm. Can you elaborate on what you mean here?

Well, without getting too long-winded, de-evolution makes more sense than evolution. It's easy to observe and validate. And even evolutionists will admit that most genetic mutations are harmful.

Then, there's the degenerated race, observed throughout history and ingrained in our consciousness (e.g. physiognomy). And we know what causes it: the moral (and corresponding morphological) decline of the people.

Edit: to try to be more clear, what I'm saying is that the logical leap that a race of men degenerated into monkeys is not as significant as it might otherwise look.

And we know the tendency of the evil one to invert the truth. Maybe monkey came from man, and not the other way around?

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Well, without getting too long-winded, de-evolution makes more sense than evolution. It's easy to observe and validate. And even evolutionists will admit that most genetic mutations are harmful.

Then, there's the degenerated race, observed throughout history and ingrained in our consciousness (e.g. physiognomy). And we know what causes it: the moral (and corresponding morphological) decline of the people.

Edit: to try to be more clear, what I'm saying is that the logical leap that a race of men degenerated into monkeys is not as significant as it might otherwise look.

And we know the tendency of the evil one to invert the truth. Maybe monkey came from man, and not the other way around?

This is an interesting take. Thanks for sharing.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

I'm anti-evolution. But I'm stuck on something that I can't articulate in my own head and would appreciate some insight.

I'm curious if there are any saints/elders that talk about why God made humans and 'monkeys' have such similar features? Is it this way perhaps because they're a prototype of humans in his creation mechanism?

Or maybe that they're an example of creatures made in our own image, like how we are made in the image of God? A living analogy so to speak. 'Monkeys' lack higher level 'mind stuff' (language, logic, math, etc.), while as humans we also lack a mysterious set of other high level 'mind stuff' that God possesses. I'm not sure that really works though because we didn't create monkeys...

If we didn't come from them, which I don't think we did, then why do we look like them? What's the purpose if they're is one that is known? What's the Orthodox Christian explanation? What are your thoughts on this?

There must be a reason God created likeness between the 'monkeys' and us in this way. This has always bothered me. I hope this makes sense and someone can enlighten me here.

These types of thoughts cause turmoil in my soul and can arise from something as simple as hearing the sounds of children playing at a playground on the 'monkey' bars and I think to myself "we're just like monkeys".

I feel spiritually uncomfortable with the idea of being 'just another animal', even though I don't believe that I am, it's just that the comparisons are many and I just don't understand why.

View attachment 48503

This is a pretty good answer. The closest I've found so far to appeasing this particular spiritual distress.

Chimp human similarity

We cannot know for sure why God made chimps and humans so alike, but it may reflect mastery of design.

creation.com

And this as well.

Human chimp dna similarity re-evaluated

The human-chimp common ancestor paradigm, which claims a nearly identical DNA content, is far lower than popularly publicized and is based more on propaganda than real data.

creation.com

 

[Uprising]

I'm anti-evolution. But I'm stuck on something that I can't articulate in my own head and would appreciate some insight.

I'm curious if there are any saints/elders that talk about why God made humans and 'monkeys' have such similar features? Is it this way perhaps because they're a prototype of humans in his creation mechanism?

Or maybe that they're an example of creatures made in our own image, like how we are made in the image of God? A living analogy so to speak. 'Monkeys' lack higher level 'mind stuff' (language, logic, math, etc.), while as humans we also lack a mysterious set of other high level 'mind stuff' that God possesses. I'm not sure that really works though because we didn't create monkeys...

If we didn't come from them, which I don't think we did, then why do we look like them? What's the purpose if they're is one that is known? What's the Orthodox Christian explanation? What are your thoughts on this?

There must be a reason God created likeness between the 'monkeys' and us in this way. This has always bothered me. I hope this makes sense and someone can enlighten me here.

These types of thoughts cause turmoil in my soul and can arise from something as simple as hearing the sounds of children playing at a playground on the 'monkey' bars and I think to myself "we're just like monkeys".

I feel spiritually uncomfortable with the idea of being 'just another animal', even though I don't believe that I am, it's just that the comparisons are many and I just don't understand why.

View attachment 48503

I don't know the Orthodox explanation, but in Catholic theology, man's likeness to God is chiefly through his soul. Baptism, while ridding us of Original Sin, does not get rid of the sins of the flesh, including concupiscence, because these sins belong to the corrupted body. The body itself belongs to the natural and animalistic world, rather than the supernatural world, which is why it dies and decays. The fact that our body shares characteristics or likeness with other creatures of the material world like animals, including apes, ought to be expected, as we were all created by the same God. If, on the other hand, we did not resemble any of God's natural creation, then we would bear no affinity to it, and would feel as if we were aliens from another world.

One must also understand that evolution itself is not incompatible with Catholicism (again, I don't know about its relationship to Orthodoxy). There are certain truths that the Church has held are infallible. One is that God created the universe and everything in it out of nothing. Another is the soul is eternal and was created in the likeness of God. Another one is monogenism, where humanity descended from two humans, Adam and Eve, rather than a pool of human couples. In so far the theory of evolution does not contradict any of these infallible truths of the Church, they can be accepted or rejected to the extent they have explanatory and predictive power. Some Catholics hold a developmental creationist view, or a theistic evolutionary view, where they say that God, over time, created the natural world, including man. The Catholic Church allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. This position is different from atheistic evolution, whereby they assert man evolved over time in a completely random manner, and that the soul, or any immaterial substance, does not exist.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Yo

I don't know the Orthodox explanation, but in Catholic theology, man's likeness to God is chiefly through his soul. Baptism, while ridding us of Original Sin, does not get rid of the sins of the flesh, including concupiscence, because these sins belong to the corrupted body. The body itself belongs to the natural and animalistic world, rather than the supernatural world, which is why it dies and decays. The fact that our body shares characteristics or likeness with other creatures of the material world like animals, including apes, ought to be expected, as we were all created by the same God. If, on the other hand, we did not resemble any of God's natural creation, then we would bear no affinity to it, and would feel as if we were aliens from another world.

One must also understand that evolution itself is not incompatible with Catholicism (again, I don't know about its relationship to Orthodoxy). There are certain truths that the Church has held are infallible. One is that God created the universe and everything in it out of nothing. Another is the soul is eternal and was created in the likeness of God. Another one is monogenism, where humanity descended from two humans, Adam and Eve, rather than a pool of human couples. In so far the theory of evolution does not contradict any of these infallible truths of the Church, they can be accepted or rejected to the extent they have explanatory and predictive power. Some Catholics hold a developmental creationist view, or a theistic evolutionary view, where they say that God, over time, created the natural world, including man. The Catholic Church allows for the possibility that man’s body developed from previous biological forms, under God’s guidance, but it insists on the special creation of his soul. This position is different from atheistic evolution, whereby they assert man evolved over time in a completely random manner, and that the soul, or any immaterial substance, does not exist.

To address your first part - and I realize it may seem really obvious to alot of Christians - it's still comforting to remember that all creatures were created by the same God so we will share similarities with one another. And humans, as stewards of the planet, seeing themselves reflected in creatures like monkeys, gives us a greater affinity towards them and understanding of how to care for them and extends to other animals as well.

Concerning your second part, and not to be combative, but alot of what's being referred to here regarding evolution is one of the many reasons I left the Catholic church for Orthodoxy.

Back to your first part -

^ Above your post I posted again later in the thread links to a couple articles. In the first one titled "Chimp human similarity" the writer gets granular with the ideas you've presented regarding possible reasons for close similarities. It's a great read.

 

[Lawrence87]

Evolution is just that, a theory, and not a proven fact. Pointing this out should end the argument. There are many theories that may or may not be true, but go around as facts (origin of fossil fuels, nature of viruses, relativity) but I wouldn't bet on them.

It's not even a great theory. At least certain theories can be supported with experiment. Evolution is just speculation about supposed events in the past that cannot be repeated and are merely asserted as having been necessary because of how things are now.

They basically just say X had to have evolved because X exists now here's my random story about how it could have happened. It all just assumes the truth of the theory from the start which is not very scientific

 

[Yeagerist]

It's not even a great theory. At least certain theories can be supported with experiment. Evolution is just speculation about supposed events in the past that cannot be repeated and are merely asserted as having been necessary because of how things are now.

They basically just say X had to have evolved because X exists now here's my random story about how it could have happened. It all just assumes the truth of the theory from the start which is not very scientific

Evolution is a pseudo-religious dogma that has been propped up by the overwhelming force of secularist philosophy and the stigma associated with the label "creationist" which has become a smear term used by atheists. It's the proverbial emperor's new clothes.

The only other options for scientists are a neutral but very vague "I don't know how species came to being" or outright acceptance of intelligent design

 

[Sisyphus]

I remember learning about phylogenetics, one of the rapidly advancing fields in evolutionary biology, in college. The idea is that all known species are plotted on these branching diagrams which are shaped like Y's with all known species represented as points at the end of the arms of the Y. They are believed to have split from a common ancestor. What is this common ancestor? No one knows, and in fact none of the nodes on the tree represent known species. The professor said with a straight face that all the nodes on the tree are unknown missing links.

The amount of hand waving required to promote this theory is astounding. It never ceases to amaze me that people with such high IQ's can gleefully gobble this up. It's a problem of infinite reduction. Any species we identify is placed at a tip of a branch and no node can ever be identified. We live in a sea of mysterious missing links that by definition can never be found. Yet onward we go, pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into increasingly complex computational models that don't accomplish anything and don't benefit anyone. A racket that by design can never be exhausted.

These people identify as atheists and condescend to religious people, yet their belief system requires an incredible amount of faith in unknowable and unproveable assertions.

 

[AdorationoftheCross]

I actually challenged my biology teacher on this fact, why are we as humans not different species? It's obvious right? If we evolved different skin tones and bone structure in Africa compared to Europe, we must be subspecies but not the same race. We are physically different, yet we can still breed with each other! It doesn't make any sense. He didn't respond, naturally!

This theory led to the holocaust and other atrocities because people believed in human subspecies. Eugenics was based on this notion and yet we ignore it, as if it's just religious bigots who want the disabled kids to be dead, rather than pollute our precious gene pool! They want to kill off all the undesirables and use science to hide their vicious agenda.

 

[get2choppaaa]

I actually challenged my biology teacher on this fact, why are we as humans not different species? It's obvious right? If we evolved different skin tones and bone structure in Africa compared to Europe, we must be subspecies but not the same race. We are physically different, yet we can still breed with each other! It doesn't make any sense. He didn't respond, naturally!

This theory led to the holocaust and other atrocities because people believed in human subspecies. Eugenics was based on this notion and yet we ignore it, as if it's just religious bigots who want the disabled kids to be dead, rather than pollute our precious gene pool! They want to kill off all the undesirables and use science to hide their vicious agenda.

Whoa... Don't use the H word... And certainly don't look into the Morgenthau plan, The labor camps that the US set up against ze Germans after wwII or the rampant spread of Typhus in Auschwitz....

Those topics, like doubting evolution are Starkes Verboten!

Morgenthau Plan - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Yeagerist]

Whoa... Don't use the H word... And certainly don't look into the Morgenthau plan, The labor camps that the US set up against ze Germans after wwII or the rampant spread of Typhus in Auschwitz....

Those topics, like doubting evolution are Starkes Verboten!

I would overlook the tidbit about an event involving swimming pools and wooden doors, but her point still stands about the implications of human evolution meaning that certain ethnic groups wouldn't have souls or nous as human beings created in the image of God

Edit: There's a good apologetics and theology pamphlet called Created in Incorruption by Hieromonk Damascene which refutes evolution and establishes creation by intelligent design as the historic patristic position of the Church. It shows that prelapsarian human nature is invulnerable to the elements and not subject to biological process because it was imbued with uncreated divine energies. Thus all genetic change in flora and fauna occured after the Fall and are actually a regression--as opposed to the progression of species as implied by evolution (notice how the idea of "progress" in an atheistic and relativist worldview is already pushed here). Also the future recapitulation of all things through Christ will bring back the benevolent state of matter and lifeforms before the Fall.

 

[TrainedLogosmotion]

Do you have any source

Well, without getting too long-winded, de-evolution makes more sense than evolution. It's easy to observe and validate. And even evolutionists will admit that most genetic mutations are harmful.

Then, there's the degenerated race, observed throughout history and ingrained in our consciousness (e.g. physiognomy). And we know what causes it: the moral (and corresponding morphological) decline of the people.

Edit: to try to be more clear, what I'm saying is that the logical leap that a race of men degenerated into monkeys is not as significant as it might otherwise look.

And we know the tendency of the evil one to invert the truth. Maybe monkey came from man, and not the other way around?

Do you have any source materials for this? I'd love to watch a documentary or read something that covers this topic.

 

[Viktor Zeegelaar]

Saints perspective: