The Bible does not contradict evolution
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 1 vote and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...
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It is important to note that this debate puts all BOP on con, because con is arguing for the presence of something, that being statements contained in the Bible that make a biblical worldview incompatible with belief in evolution.
It is only fair that we frame the debate this way, since the atheist position is that there is no God until proven otherwise.
There is no contradiction until proven otherwise.
The Bible uses the word "day" when describing the 6 stages of creation and the final day of rest, which implies that creation only took 6 days and not millions of years in which life evolved. The bible also says however that one day for God is like a thousand years and vice versa, which isn't necessarily meant to be taken literally but is to imply that God doesn't perceive time the same way that we do. So when the Bible uses the word "day" it is unclear if it means a literal 24 hour period.
What I find is that most contradictions in the bible, at least as it pertains to it's own internal consistency, are really just contrived from imperfect translations of certain words and from lazy interpretation. That being said, every time you claim the Bible says something you have to make sure that you are taking into context the differing semantics between English translations and the original Hebrew/greek etc. (especially since most English translations aren't just translations but translations OF translations) and also that your interpretations are taking the message as a whole in context and are not merely a reddit atheist's smear campaign that has already been ripped to shreds by 100 different biblical scholars.
It is important to note that this debate puts all BOP on con, because con is arguing for the presence of something, that being statements contained in the Bible that make a biblical worldview incompatible with belief in evolution.
There is no contradiction until proven otherwise.
The Bible uses the word "day" when describing the 6 stages of creation and the final day of rest, which implies that creation only took 6 days and not millions of years in which life evolved. The bible also says however that one day for God is like a thousand years and vice versa, which isn't necessarily meant to be taken literally but is to imply that God doesn't perceive time the same way that we do. So when the Bible uses the word "day" it is unclear if it means a literal 24 hour period.
The first thing God creates is light, he separates it from darkness and calls it "good". First there was darkness (evening) and then there was light (morning). Thus each act of creation, which corresponds to a "day", is the "morning" which is being brought out of the "darkness" i.e the lack of creation and divine order.
darkness/night is symbolic of chaos, entropy, evil (which is really just a lack of goodness and lawfulness i.e "light") whereas light is symbolic of goodness, order and creation.
So if God was talking about literal days, he would say "from the evening to the evening" instead of evening to morning, because that would represent an actual 24 hour period. What God is really saying is that the "day" is the creation that is able to unfold because God brought the "morning" out of the "night".
It is important to take this in context with the entire bible, because a recurring theme in the bible is that God brings good things out of evil things i.e "light" things out of "dark" things.
The Bible does not tell you details about the process through which God created each life form. The Bible only tells you that specific kinds of life forms were created and that God created them.
The bible describes a day as "evening" followed by "morning". This isn't how we would normally think of day, most people would define it as going from morning to evening. The reason why it is described this way in the bible is because there is a deeper spiritual meaning.
darkness/night is symbolic of chaos, entropy, evil (which is really just a lack of goodness and lawfulness i.e "light") whereas light is symbolic of goodness, order and creation.
So if God was talking about literal days, he would say "from the evening to the evening" instead of evening to morning, because that would represent an actual 24 hour period.
In the original hebrew of the old testament, there are actually 3 languages wrapped into one. Every single word in the old testament has at least 3 different meanings. Not only do hebrew letters correspond to numbers but they also correspond to a whole different set of symbols/letters in the form of pictographs.
For example the first word of the bible in hebrew consists of 3 letters and translates to "in the beginning". This also corresponds to 6 pictographs, which in the most literal way of translating mean "house son power destroy work covenant"
There are two different interpretations of this, the christian one and the jewish one. It's also possible that it can mean both at the same time.
The Jewish interpretation says: the home ( the garden) of Adam (God's "son" i.e creation) will be destroyed by God, so that God can bring about the covenant.
The Christian interpretation says: abiding therein (on earth) the son with the power of God shall be destroyed as a work of the covenant
This is why in order to really win this debate, you will have to take into account that many words lose their original meaning when being translated into english, not only on the superficial level of Hebrew not always translating directly into English, but also in how context changes the meaning of words in Hebrew and how the two extra languages built into Hebrew affect the meaning.
There is a reason that the first "day" corresponds with their being first darkness and then the creation of light. The bible is literally telling you that the day corresponds to the creation rather than the creation corresponding to the day. God is using the words dark and light synonymously with night and day and using those words interchangeably with lack of divine order and the presence thereof. Knowledge of the Hebrew language lends credibility to this interpretation because words like light/dark and night/day are deeply symbolic.
If each "day" is a 24 hour period which corresponds to the rotation of the planet relative to the sun, then why does God only create the sun and moon on the fourth day?
The Bible saying "after their kind" doesn't mean "poofed into existence" but that there are different kinds of animals that can reproduce with each other. Especially since the phrase might take on different semantic characteristics in the original hebrew text.
You keep appealing to simplicity but the bible is not a simple text. Everything in the bible is like a triple entendre with different levels of literal and metaphorical meaning laced with numerology adding even more levels of meaning.
This is why in order to really win this debate, you will have to take into account that many words lose their original meaning when being translated into english, not only on the superficial level of Hebrew not always translating directly into English, but also in how context changes the meaning of words in Hebrew and how the two extra languages built into Hebrew affect the meaning.
There is a reason that the first "day" corresponds with their being first darkness and then the creation of light. The bible is literally telling you that the day corresponds to the creation rather than the creation corresponding to the day.
Argument: Pro won the argument of this debate with a very clear and sustained order of presentation through all three rounds, and actually won it in R1 with a very clear description of creation being a process of bringing light out of darkness, and "divine order" out of chaos; a specific description which Con never adequately challenged. In fact, Con's R1 stated: "I would have liked that to be in the description..." and in R3: "...you should have specified what you meant by "the bible" in the description..." In both instances, regardless of what Con would have preferred, I note he made no effort to make these requests ion the challenge phase of the debate prior to accepting the challenge. That implied tacit approval of the challenge. Also, pro's discussion oof the inherent suggestibility of the Hebrew language, and the failure of adequate translation into other languages, was not adequately challenged by Con. It seems evidence that Bible translation from Hebrew and Greek, primarily, to any other language, fails since most translation efforts are dictionary-to-dictionary, which does nothing for cultural understanding. Since language is a creation by culture, and not the other wary around, culture is requi8red to be understood to offer successful translation. Knowledge of biblical culture was likely missing in the first biblical translations of history. Con never argued against this history.
Sourcing: Pro made better use of biblical citations to supports his argument than did Con, who mostly merely pointed out that translation isn';t precise, and that's God's fault. Nope. God did not write one words of the Bible - it is all the writing of fallible men and women. It is obvious by reading the entire text that Go0d expects our belief in the word by its reading. All of it. points to Pro.
As noted above, Pro's use of sourcing, and a keen understanding of the debate raw material was used much more clearly by Pro.
I should have added in my vote that Pro's argument in R1 included mention that the description of creation in Genesis, which Pro cites, indicates that God created heaven and earth, but did not describe how it was done. This is an adequate description by Pro that evolution, itself, may have played a part in the creative process.
I would add the possibility that creation continues to this day by that means, and I see no contradiction biblically to refute the possibility, but do not make that last comment a feature of my vote because it is conjecture, and Pro did not specifically make that argument.
Care to vote? I would like to note that in the last round con accuses me of springing a "trap" and failing to specify that he has to take into account the actual original meaning of the bible and not just a flawed english translation. He says I should lose a conduct point for this, even though I said in the very first round that you have to take into account the flaws in translations and make sure you are putting it into context with the original Hebrew in mind in order to understand the real meaning of the Bible.