All right, so I have an idea that I'd like a religious perspective on. First, I would like to clarify for the purposes of this argument that I am taking the following viewpoints:
1. The earth is over 4 billion years old.
2. God is not completely omnipotent, but is very close. (If he were omnipotent it would have taken Him an instant to create everything, not a week)
3. God is omniscient
Also, please be sure you know what evolution is before replying. I will ignore any comments about cats giving birth to dogs, life in peanut butter, crocoducks, etc.
Now, I'm good with computers. When I have a repetitive task, for example, finding the first 12 prime numbers over one million, I will write a program to do it for me instead of calculating them over and over.
So, let's take God. He's obviously a very intelligent person. And any intelligent person will naturally find a way to reduce the amount of work they had to do. So, God decides to make a planet. Millions of species. And every single one needs to be designed, tested, reworked, retested, etc.
So why do it all by hand?
God knows the butterfly effect. So, why not create evolution, a system which will create all the species he wants with minimal effort? He can tell that by placing cell 0 in the right place that it will spawn the human race and all the horses, trees, chinchillas, etc. he needs! Sure, it will take a few billion years, but God is eternal. A billion years can't be very long to Him.
He knows that if he uses Evolution, he will end up with the smartest dolphins, the cutest kittens, and the strongest humans.
Personally, it doesn't seem very smart to create all those things one by one. And God would know that.
Is this a decent compromise?
1. The earth is over 4 billion years old.
2. God is not completely omnipotent, but is very close. (If he were omnipotent it would have taken Him an instant to create everything, not a week)
3. God is omniscient
Also, please be sure you know what evolution is before replying. I will ignore any comments about cats giving birth to dogs, life in peanut butter, crocoducks, etc.
Now, I'm good with computers. When I have a repetitive task, for example, finding the first 12 prime numbers over one million, I will write a program to do it for me instead of calculating them over and over.
So, let's take God. He's obviously a very intelligent person. And any intelligent person will naturally find a way to reduce the amount of work they had to do. So, God decides to make a planet. Millions of species. And every single one needs to be designed, tested, reworked, retested, etc.
So why do it all by hand?
God knows the butterfly effect. So, why not create evolution, a system which will create all the species he wants with minimal effort? He can tell that by placing cell 0 in the right place that it will spawn the human race and all the horses, trees, chinchillas, etc. he needs! Sure, it will take a few billion years, but God is eternal. A billion years can't be very long to Him.
He knows that if he uses Evolution, he will end up with the smartest dolphins, the cutest kittens, and the strongest humans.
Personally, it doesn't seem very smart to create all those things one by one. And God would know that.
Is this a decent compromise?