[Zhavric]

Quote by: stevemckay Now my question: Can you really believe in evolution AND the God that is represented in the bible?

Nope. Not without sacrificing any and all intellectual honesty.

I think you can. For example: Gen 2:7 the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground… Gen 8:20 Then Noah made an altar to the Lord…. No one, I assume, believes Noah magically created an altar but, rather, had to gather stone, pile them up, etc... He had to build it in stages. The Bible does not specifically mention those steps but we should assume they were there.

I haven't read the thread yet, but I'm willing to bet my mustache that no one has pointed out the fact that the bible was written by human beings who were absolutely clueless about the natural world. It's disingenuous to believe that were implying evolution in the chapters of genesis the way they were implying ship building in the fairy tale of the flood.

Furthermore, this line of reasoning falls apart when we look at how most Christians treat the rest of the bible because you're establishing a dangerously honest precedent. What you're effectively saying is "a passage in the bible that science has determined to be impossible is likely figurative and doesn't literally mean what it says." However, you still need many critical bits of the bible to be literal for Christianity to work. If you have a figurative fall of man then why do you need a literal savior to sacrifice himself. For that matter, how can you claim that Jesus came back from the dead? Isn't coming back from the dead every bit as impossible as the Earth forming in a day or Noah building an entire ark with his bare hands?

You're better off embracing intellectual honesty and discarding the whole mess.