Originally Posted by
alanmolstad
I will tell you about a conversation I had:
Many years ago I was talking to a guy I knew ,and I also knew that he was a believer in the whole Young Earth Creationism stuff.
He also asked me to find a verse that teaches that "Man came from ape"
He used to smile when he asked me that question, because he knew enough about the Bible to know that there is no single verse that clearly teaches anything much about ape evolution...let alone that man evolved from one.
But rather than attempting to "teach"my friend anything,I went about this a different way...
I asked my friend, "According to what you know about the teachings of evolution, you believe it teaches that man came from ape?"
"Yes"was his answer.
"But what came before that? I asked.
"What do you mean?" was his response.
"I mean what came before the ape that you keep talking about according to evolution, or does evolution teach that apes just suddenly appeared on the earth out of thin air?"
He considered his answer, then spoke, "Well sure evolution teaches that there was something before the apes, but regardless its not what the Bible teaches."
I continued, "We will get to what the Bible teaches in a moment, but first I want to understand what you mean by evolution and how you understand what it's saying."
I let this sink in for a moment, then went on and asked him , "So you just said that according to evolution that there were earlier life forms before the apes, and so what was one of them?"
My friend answered, "I think that if you trace back life according to evolution, then you find that all the mammals are related, and then they are connected to fish,and then if you go back far enough in the way evolution looks at things we all started out as bacteria or something like that!"
I then press him and ask, "So there was nothing before the bacteria then?...are we to believe that evolution teaches that bacteria suddenly "popped" into being?...that evolution stops there?"
This caused my friend to pause a moment as he did not really know what to say to me I think, but then he added, "My guess is that before that you would be talking about inorganic things, different minerals and amino acids and organic compounds."
"Good answer" I told my friend. "And whats important about them is that what we are talking about is that according to the teachings of evolution , that you reject, we find that the very building blocks of all life come from this earth itself"
My friend responds "Yes, so what? Thats still very different than what the Bible teaches"
"Is it?" I ask, "Is it all that different than what the Bible teaches?"
I then opened my bible to the story of Genesis and I read to him where life on the earth is said to be from, where life is sourced from in the story.
"Let me read this to you, Genesis 1:11 "And God said, Let the earth bring forth gr*** Genesis 1:24 And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature. Genesis 2:9 9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree Genesis 2:19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken"
I paused for effect.....
Then said the following-
"What we read in the Bible is not the cl***ic textbook understanding of the teachings of evolution. But on the other hand, what the bible does say about where life is from is in agreement with where we just said evolution teaches all life is from. So while they may not say things in the very same way or use the very same words, yet you cant deny that two works of Genesis and Evolution do manage to walk hand-in-hand with each other at the end of the day to get to the same place."