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Article Title:	A Challenge For Every Christian
Author of reported comment:	Chris E
Comment Date:	02:39 on Feb 15 2009
Comment:	Evolution is only ruled out by a flat and literalistic reading of Genesis, and it's worth pointing out that the majority of Christians down the ages have not taken this approach to reading Scripture. The Bible has to be read according to the conventions with which it was written. There are very few Christians who would choose to read the locusts in Revelations as anything other than symbolic. Similarly, the latter part of Daniel and Ezekiel would also be read symbolically. This doesn't show a disrespect for the Bible - on the contrary it shows that we take the Bible seriously enough that we are willing to understand it on it's own terms and leave aside our pre-conceptions of what it is. On the other hand, due to prudishness, a number of Christians in previous eras constructed complex symbolic readings of Song of Songs - Bernard of Clairvaux as an example. When the Chicago Statement on Inerancy was drawn up, the proposal by Henry Morris that a YEC position be included was specifically rejected. The assembled evangelicals felt that neither they, nor leaders down the ages, could justify that as the only plausible reading for Genesis given what scripture claims about itself. That some of the Christians in past ages believed in a Six Day creation is self evident largely because of the lack of any known alternative. Though there were many - like Augustine - who did not take this view. Again, there have been great Christians who have got science wrong because of a literalistic reading of the bible - Luther and Melancthon joined the Catholic church in condemning the theories of Galileo. Theistic evolution does not rule out a literal Adam and Eve, neither does it rule out a Scripture that is God breathed.

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