I wonder what the sharks and the orcas ate. Seaweed?
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I don’t even have to read the article, the opening statement is wrong. There is nothing clear about Genesis, I would even argue that it is purposefully ambiguous.
OK, I had to look…
If we accept this, then we must say that God was the creator of these evils.
Why is accepting that God created death so difficult. How is physical death in regard to supporting life a bad thing? Imagine what the world would be like if nothing ever died…ick!!! Pretty sure we would all be wading through flies and mosquitoes and cockroaches, crawling over each other (crawling over that stinky guy from 3000 BC France who refuses to bathe…).
This occurs in Genesis 1:29–30 where God first directed man, and then the animals, that they were to eat only the certain specified items ‘for food.’
Interesting to me that they don’t include the passage they reference…here it is:
29 And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. 30 Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is [a]life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.
The passage “clearly” is ambiguous…sure, God says plants are food for us, but does not say not to eat meat…it seems to me that the passage defines the base source of all food to be plants, which is the truth…the beginning of all ecosystems (proven scientifically) is light (1 John 1:5…God is light…). This is the message I think Gen 1:29-30 presents, that God gives life to everything.
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They ate sea cucumbers on their seaweed salads. (Nobody wanted to break the news to them that sea cucumbers are animals.)
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Don’t plants die when you eat them?
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You were the one complaining about the graph of ages of biblical characters in Sanford’s book. It DID record it!
We already have the evidence - you’re already pointing to it.
You seem to be completely missing my argument. I am not saying each specific disease is not a result of sin. I am saying all disease in general is the result of the evil sin brought upon the world.
So what do you imagine the new heavens and earth to be like? All crawling over each other?
We should embrace death because of population overgrowth?
Rather short on mechanism, but I see that the change was claimed to be through “genetic reprogramming” and more or less instantaneous.
Another question: If every fruit that has seed was supposed to be food for us, does that mean that bananas and seedless grapes wouldn’t be allowed?
Ages of individual patriarchs says absolutely nothing about changes in animals? You are severely adding miraculous things the Bible never mentions.
And I guess you missed my point about how Moses refutes that graph in Psalm 90. Moses said the average natural lifespan at his time was roughly 70 years, 80 if strong. Not much different from today, 3000+ years later. What happened to all that GE? Try plugging in numbers in that exponential equation on the graph to see how long we’re supposed to be living today. Compare that to indigenous tribes that don’t use modern medical care. Tell me if they match or even come close to each other.
Where does the Bible say that sin brought disease into the world?
I’m going to again recommend the book Reformed Theology & Evolutionary Theory by Gijsbert van den Brink. It thoroughly looks at the theological implications of accepting evolutionary theory and answers a lot of your questions. You seem to have a problem with evil being in the world, and I understand that. That’s a common problem people have to tackle. But that problem still exists even in the YEC view. Evil existed prior to Adam’s sin (who tempted Adam and Eve to begin with?).
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Again, New Jerusalem is a state of eternal spirit, we will be transformed, not resurrected. I have no idea what that will be like, but there will be no death, so I would suppose that we will not have physical form as we currently know it. But again, I have no idea.
What Theistic Evolutionists (TEer) miss out on is God. If God actually creates through an ENTIRELY different mode to what TE states happened, then TEers are worshipping a false image and a false god. It’s logically impossible to have a set of mental images or basic concepts of a person that are the exact opposite of what that person truly is, and then claim you know him or anything about that person. No reasonable person can claim that having the fundamentals wrong will deliver you the accurate big picture.
For TEers to then move the subject onto, say, God died for you etc etc is the important issue, is a strategy of evasion. Creation is, arguably, the most important office of God. If we do not know him as Creator, how can we know him as our Saviour (and I would say the flip side is equally true).
I judge a person’s skill and intelligence level by their accuracy and speed of accomplishment. I’d rather not take my broken-down car to a mechanic who takes months to partially “fix” it. My choice has always been the mechanic who takes minutes, or a few hours at most, and completely repairs it. Creators are no different. I see a universe of difference between a God who takes a few days to make a perfect world and another “god” who takes eons and gets it so wrong, a world filled with disease-causing mutations, pain, suffering and death as part and parcel of his “creation” method, evolution.
Another point. The distinguishing criteria between the miraculous and the ordinary is how much time is involved. A short time, one that precludes natural law taking effect (e.g. water to wine over years!), indicates a miracle (e.g. water to wine in a fillip!). The metaphysical naturalist, when he sees the world as being just the product of the interaction of matter and huge amounts of time, is quite rational when he, inter alia, invokes Ockham and concludes “No God!”
In the very least, evolution occludes God from view, at worst, it makes him a superfluity. After all, what does God actually do in an evolutionary world? I can’t see a place for him at all in such a world.
If that’s the case, then is God incompetent because His plan of salvation took many centuries to accomplish, since Adam all the way to Jesus Christ to today? Christians have been waiting for Christ to come back for two millennia now. Does that also point to God’s incompetence in needing to wait so long?
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God has many attributes. Efficiency is not one of them. Do you also reject progress revelation and progressive sanctification? Do you deny that human procreation is also an act of God’s creation? Your whole thinking is ahistorical and atheological, and thus sub-Christian.
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You confuse a kilo of apples with an orchard of oranges! That is, a category mistake.
If you can’t see the difference between (i) God working WITHOUT humanity and the Bible’s saying he created everything in 6 days, that at the end of the 6 days he said it was “very good”, that all his creation work was “finished”, that he had “ended his work which he had finished” (Gen 2:1-2) and (ii) God working THROUGH humanity and history for our salvation, then what can I say?
But let me take a stab at it anyhow.
- The key, or at least one key I can quickly put my finger on, is 2 Peter 3: “This is the second letter I have written to you, dear friends of mine, and in both of them I have tried to stimulate you, as men with minds uncontaminated by error, by simply reminding you of what you really know already. For I want you to remember the words spoken of old by the holy prophets as well as the commands of our Lord and saviour given to you through his messengers. First of all you must realise that in the last days mockers will undoubtedly come…But you should never lose sight of this fact, dear friends, that time is not the same with the Lord as it is with us—to him a day may be a thousand years, and a thousand years only a day. It is not that he is dilatory about keeping his own promise as some men seem to think; the fact is that he is very patient towards you. He has no wish that any man should be destroyed. He wishes that all men should come to repent…Meanwhile, consider that God’s patience is meant to be man’s salvation, as our dear brother Paul pointed out in his letter to you, written out of the wisdom God gave him. In that letter, as indeed in all his letters, he referred to these matters. There are, of course, some things which are difficult to understand, and which, unhappily, ill-informed and unbalanced people distort (as they do the other scriptures), and bring disaster on their own heads.”
- The unfolding of his salvation plan took time because everything had to run its course before it was just right for the Messiah to appear. There are enough books written on this but a few items are important: one language, an empire where the Good News could easily be spread, the prophets had to complete their teachings about the Messiah, Israel had to come into existence, prophecy had to be complete and FULFILLED, and may other things which is FOR OUR BENEFIT: “God, who gave our forefathers many different glimpses of the truth in the words of the prophets, has now, at the end of the present age, given us the truth in the Son.” (Hebrews 1)
- BTW, I prefer to take my broken-down car to a mechanic who bases his work on creationist principles (quick, accurate and less costly) than a mechanic who works off the principles of evolution (slow, inaccurate and more expensive). So you routinely opt for the latter?
- You haven’t actually explained your “defeater” to my argument. What you’ve done is put up an enthymematic syllogism. I’ll leave you to fill in the missing elements as it would be completely presumptuous of me to think I know what you’re thinking.
- Your “defeater” doesn’t really address my argument. It runs around it and posits something egregiously disanalogous because you’ve ignored the stark differences between the two. Again, I’ll let you tidy your “defeater” up.
- Paul writes in many places about the predestined Church. Rather than resting on our own understanding, I prefer to read what Paul counsels us to grasp: “Praise be to God for giving us through Christ every possible spiritual benefit as citizens of Heaven! For consider what he has done—before the foundation of the world he chose us to become, in Christ, his holy and blameless children living within his constant care. He planned, in his purpose of love, that we should be adopted as his own children through Jesus Christ…For God had allowed us to know the secret of his plan, and it is this: he purposes in his sovereign will that all human history shall be consummated in Christ, that everything that exists in Heaven or earth shall find its perfection and fulfilment in him…And here is the staggering thing—that in all which will one day belong to him we have been promised a share (since we were long ago destined for this by the one who achieves his purposes by his sovereign will), so that we, as the first to put our confidence in Christ, may bring praise to his glory! And you too trusted him, when you heard the message of truth, the Gospel of your salvation…What I have written briefly of this above will explain to you my knowledge of the mystery of Christ. This secret was hidden to past generations of mankind, but it has now, by the spirit, been made plain to God’s consecrated messengers and prophets. It is simply this: that the Gentiles, who were previously excluded from God’s agreements, are to be equal heirs with his chosen people, equal members and equal partners in God’s promise given by Christ through the Gospel…Yes, to me, less than the least of all Christians, has God given this grace, to enable me to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of Christ, and to make plain to all men the meaning of that secret which he who created everything in Christ has kept hidden from the creation until now. The purpose is that all the angelic powers should now see the complex wisdom of God’s plan being worked out through the Church, in conformity to that timeless purpose which he centred in Jesus, our Lord.” (Ephesians 1 & 3) What you need to explain is how, logically and actually, God’s plan of salvation could have been possibly fulfilled in any other way i.e. in a fillip. It seems to me, just by the terms, that salvation MUST take time in order for the full Church to be realised. But maybe you have another explanation. I see God’s plan of salvation as perfect because it is the only way God could deal with us. Creation history, similarly, was perfect because it is the only way God could have done it. To say God used mutations and time and death and pain and suffering is NOT a Christian worldview; it’s a pagan one. You didn’t deal with this, which was the point of my argument.
The story of Samson mentions honey in the carcass of a lion, so lions - predatory ones, because “out of the eater comes sweetness” - are known in old testament times.
So apparently we got evolution in just a couple of thousand years from a cow-like herbivore to a fully-adapted predator.
YEC evolution puts naturalistic evolution to shame for pace and power… and also I’m not sure how flexible the ‘kind’ (baramin?) concept has to be to consider that a lion is the same ‘kind’ as a herbivore.
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But God could have easily chosen to work out the plan of salvation much more quickly, instead of waiting for the natural course of human history until things became just right. For example, Israel could have waited for much less than 400 years of slavery in Egypt before the Exodus. God could have supernaturally spread the Good News instantly to all the people that He predestined, instead of waiting centuries for missionaries to arise slowly. God could also instantly end all the pain and suffering in this world. Yet you consider none of these things as evidence of God’s incompetence.
Efficiency only makes sense when you know what the goal is. Humans prefer efficiency because they have a set of limited, human-centered goals in view. But my sinful and limited preferences are not appropriate to be applied to God, whose goals and thoughts are deeper and more profound than anything I can imagine. God is under no obligation to follow human standards of efficiency. You might as well ask why God bothered to create millions of stars and galaxies which humans will never explore or even notice. Perhaps there are some things that can only be accomplished by the creation of the universe over billions of years. I do not know. It is God’s choice, done according to God’s sovereign will, for the glory of God alone.
My objection is meant to expose the inconsistencies that you applied in your initial argument, that your personal judgment of a person’s skill and intelligence can be applied to God. I’d like to emphasize one thing: even if evolution is false and young earth creationism is true, I would not make the argument that you did. It is irreverent towards God. We do not have a right to judge God according to our human standards of what a good mechanic is.
A Christian worldview does not use human standards to judge God’s competence, regardless of the way that He chose to accomplish His purposes. By human standards, Christ was a failure. He failed to amass anymore than a few dozen followers during His lifetime, and He died the most ignominious death possible…“But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Cor. 2:7-8)
Similarly, in the case of evolution, I do not know why God chose to work in that way. Yet regardless of whether God works through evolution or instant creation, God is still God.
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This is where I struggle with the YEC thinking. Do you not know that God is outside of time? Do you understand the prophetic scriptures that explain the victory, and that these occurrences, though in the future have already happened? Do you not understand that 13.8B years is a blink of an eye to an eternal God?
There is no box large enough for you to categorize and personify the workings of God. There is no time frame that any of us will ever understand other than the hundred or so years that we will exist in the flesh. No one can say, “I know what a thousand years feels like.” or “I know that God did it this way because of that…”
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And I struggle with OEC “thinking” which doesn’t engage the logic of an opponent’s argument but moves to entirely other point. I also struggle with OEC “thinking” which accuses their opponent of nescience about God’s workings (“There is no box large enough for YOU to categorize and personify the workings of God”) but then lays out a lengthy catalogue of what THEY know about God and his workings (check your itemised list in your response). I also struggle with OEC who reprimand someone who says we CAN know lots about God’s actions because he HAS told us already: “How I long for you to grow more certain in your knowledge and more sure in your grasp of God himself. May your spiritual experience become richer as you see more and more fully God’s great secret, Christ himself! For it is in him, and in him alone, that men will find all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2) and “But we who are spiritual…have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2) Christ, being the Creator, has told us in SCRIPTURE what he did. With our minds, we CAN understand.
Whether God is “outside of time” (whatever that means?!) is irrelevant because (i) we observe miracles IN time, and (ii) we notice miracles because time is excluded from being an operative consideration in order to understand with our understanding that a miracle has taken place (otherwise how would we recognise one has taken place?).
If Jesus had told the marriage party to come back in 10 years and then taste the wine that exceeded the quality of Chateau Petrus, then quite rationally we would think he was nothing but a clever oenologist and NOT the miracle worker he was.
All the miracles of the Bible happened quickly, so quickly as to definitively rule out materialism and naturalistic explanations. The Creation is the biggest miracle because it brought EVERYTHING out of NO-THING. And that’s a very good reason to pay attention to the plain words of Scripture which teach this and “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding”.
May I suggest you read, slowly, Exodus 20:1-21 and ask yourself why, of all these 10 miztvot, the 4th is the only one an OEC takes non-literally?
May I also suggest you read, slowly, Exodus 31:12-18 and ask yourself would Moses have understood God to mean what OEC believe today? Further ask yourself, if Moses had taken God’s words at their face value, did God mislead Moses? After all, OEC say that God didn’t really take an actual 6 24-hour days?
- Daniel, at first I thought that you had soundly put me in my place. After all, anyone with a PhD in physics should have more knowledge about God than someone who has not earned such a highly ranked degree.
But once I read your response a little further I had to reconsider that conclusion.
As a result of your admission that “[God’s] goals and thoughts are deeper and more profound than anything I can imagine”, “I do not know” and “I do not know why God chose to work in that way” (leaving aside the point that you question beg that God actually did create by evolution), all prefaced with a plethora of apodictic ‘could have’s’, I can’t find any good reason to be dissuaded from my argument to yours. Because of this confession that you do not have any special knowledge of what God does, why would I seriously take on-board anything you’ve said. An opponent’s not knowing something is not a strength but a weakness and is not warrant to alter one’s own ideas.
Interestingly, and might I say, irrationally, you write “Yet you consider none of these [“slow” acts] as evidence of God’s incompetence”. I don’t know whether anyone has ever informed you, but possible world scenarios and the mere invocation of something does not instantiate its existence. Something’s being a product of a thought experiment or wishful thinking does not grant it any ontological reality or, indeed, hypostasize it to an equivalence of what actually happened.
To posit possibilities as genuine options for God implies you have access to God’s mind and that God could have done differently if he had chosen otherwise. Now that’s one heck of a big call and I, and many others, would like to know on what basis you have this privileged admission to the “secret and hidden wisdom of God”.
Such a belief reminds me of one of my former philosophy professors. Mesmerised by the uncanny ability of chalk on a blackboard to transform the fancifully abstract to the concrete, and desirous to demonstrate that given enough time, chance can produce anything, he rolled out a curve, thin at both ends, bulbous in the middle, to “prove” that 100 heads can be actually consecutively flipped in a series of coin tosses, given enough time and coin flips. I had to remind him that a bell curve chalk-drawn between two axes is nothing but a bell curve chalk-drawn between two axes. Reality must be given the VIP attention, and this reality has the last say, not unaccompanied belief (which was a point of interest in itself – after all, every first year Philosophy student is well rehearsed in that knowledge is true, justified belief, not belief to the exclusion of anything else). Similarly, your listing what God “could have” done falls under the same criticism I levelled at my old professor.
For someone who pleads ignorance of God’s mind, you sure do possess a whole lot of insight into what God “could have” accomplished. (I wouldn’t be surprised to hear you next try to tell me that God could have made a bachelor with a wife and still remain a bachelor, after all, who am I, mere human that I am, to tell God what he can and cannot do!)
But to recall my original argument, your “defeaters” ignore my underscored point. As I wrote, “The unfolding of his salvation plan took time because everything had to run its course before it was just right for the Messiah to appear. There are enough books written on this but a few items are important: one language, an empire where the Good News could easily be spread, the prophets had to complete their teachings about the Messiah, Israel had to come into existence, prophecy had to be complete and FULFILLED, and may other things which is FOR OUR BENEFIT”. Brother, it’s a case of horses for courses!
2. So God did not have a goal in mind when he created? And the Scriptures stating that, “the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens” is not a goal-purposed, goal-completed project?
And God has a disdain for efficiency and prefers wasteful operations?
God’s “goals and thoughts are deeper and more profound than anything I can imagine” but you absolutely know he’s not efficient and you know nothing about his goals because you can’t IMAGINE them? Well, fancy that!
Your not knowing of God’s ways reminds me of the wise counsel an old, but now deceased, friend of mine once gave me: “What the Church needs is its own Copernican revolution.” He meant by this that the Church is still held tight captive to an Aristotelian worldview. Aristotle has kept the Church in the dark about who God is by putting a veil between our minds and the heavenly realities. Knowledge about God has been blocked because God has become the unknown God.
Contrary to your lack of knowledge, Paul says that “I might fully declare God’s word—that sacred mystery which up to now has been hidden in every age and every generation, but which is now as clear as daylight to those who love God. They are those to whom God has planned to give a vision of the full wonder and splendour of his secret plan for the sons of men.” (Col 1)
3. “My objection is meant to expose the inconsistencies that you applied in your initial argument, that your personal judgment of a person’s skill and intelligence can[sic] be applied to God. I’d like to emphasize one thing: even if evolution is false and young earth creationism is true, I would not make the argument that you did. It is irreverent towards God. We do not have a right to judge God according to our human standards of what a good mechanic is.”
I did not judge God. I used Scripture and reason to understand God, just as Jesus and Paul encouraged us to. After all, did the king of Israel advise us “in all your getting, get non-understanding”?
What’s so irreverent about saying that God is efficient, intelligent and accurate when he creates? Surely it is you and your buddies here who claim that God is inefficient, slow and inaccurate who are the irreverent ones.
The intelligent, by their very nature, can’t but act quickly and accurately. The unintelligent, by their very nature, can’t but act slowly and inaccurately. The only time the intelligent act contrary to their intrinsic nature is when they are out to criminally deceive another.
Rather than hurling sanctimonious elephants at me you should directly address the crux of my argument, not deflect it to another.
4. I said: “To say God used mutations and time and death and pain and suffering is NOT a Christian worldview; it’s a pagan one. You didn’t deal with this, which was the point of my argument.”
Your response was: “A Christian worldview does not use human standards to judge God’s competence, regardless of the way that He chose to accomplish His purposes.”
Once again you did an end-run around my point.
On the basis of your belief that God used evolution, and all its attendant misery of death, pain and suffering, you seem to believe you can make a theodicean purse out of a thanophilic sow’s ear. On the contrary, a worldview which says God is the author of death, misery and suffering, and that these are natural and integral to God’s plan, is a worldview according to human standards, not God’s: “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” (Col 2)
- You quoted this: “But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” (1 Cor. 2:7-8)
Your bowdlerised version of Paul is unsurprising and ironic, given our topic. You omitted some key verses. Preceding yours is, “We do, of course, speak “wisdom” among those who are spiritually mature, but it is not what is called wisdom by this world, nor by the powers-that-be, who soon will be only the powers that have been.” (v. 6)
Paul then goes on to say, contrary to the expostulations of many on this thread, “For nothing is hidden from the Spirit, not even the deep wisdom of God. For who could really understand a man’s inmost thoughts except the spirit of the man himself? How much less could anyone understand the thoughts of God except the very Spirit of God? And the marvellous thing is this, that we now receive not the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God himself, so that we can actually understand something of God’s generosity towards us. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, explaining things to those who are spiritual. But the naturalistic man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:10-16)
- “Similarly, in the case of evolution, I do not know why God chose to work in that way. Yet regardless of whether God works through evolution or instant creation, God is still God.”
Begs the question he did “create” through evolution. (BTW, I don’t understand how God can create through a method which, empirically and theoretically, casts the vast majority of, if not all, mutations as being deleterious. If you think that withdrawing money at a faster rate than you’re depositing can make you a millionaire, then your thinking and science has gone superbly awry.)
You don’t know why God chose a method riddled with death, disease, pain, suffering and survival of the fittest, but you’re sure he did. No untidy and recalcitrant bits of (il)logic poking their heads up?
A “god” who prefers to use death, pain and suffering Vs God who didn’t, are not the same entity. My 12-year-old understands that much.
Perhaps you have mistaken me for OEC, I am not. I do not claim allegiance to anything other than truth in scripture. In regard to that, when I hear the YEC camp claim that God is this or that, I cringe. When I hear the OEC camp claim God does this or that, I also cringe. The bible says God IS, and is beyond our understanding. That is what I hold to.
An admission that one honestly doesn’t know something is better than claiming knowledge without good reason. That is one of the most important principles I learned as a scientist.
One thing you should also note is that I have no desire to prove my intellectual superiority to you in this debate. That’s something you should learn about this forum. We are here to dialogue in a productive and peaceful manner, not “win” or “lose”. Perhaps you are more knowledgeable, smarter, and more correct than I am. That’s OK, because we come here with honest arguments. Perhaps we can learn from each other.
You seemed to have missed the point of what we’re trying to argue. My point is exactly what you said: we don’t know the secret and hidden wisdom of God. Therefore, judging that a God who creates through evolution is incompetent compared to a God who creates instantly is not a judgment we are qualified to make.
Remember that I’m not here to argue that God created through evolution rather than through instant creation. That’s a different topic entirely. I am simply here to point out weaknesses in your argument against the competency of God if He were to create through evolution.
I’m not sure of the relevance of this digression. I don’t believe in true chance. I believe that God providentially ordains and governs everything.
If we want to take the doctrine of God’s omnipotence seriously, then we shouldn’t be shy to affirm God’s capability to act in many different ways. The unfolding of God’s revelation in history resulted in many contingent facts being true, such as that the Northern Kingdom fell to Assyria in 722 B.C. Now, it seems that you are close to affirming that human history could not have unfolded other than it is, such that even God does not have the power make the Northern Kingdom fall in 730 BC instead of 722 BC.
To me, such a stance risks elevating all of creation into a necessity and making God dependent on it, which would violate God’s aseity. Thus, I reject that position.
Now, of course, we also shouldn’t go to other extreme - I don’t think God can make logical contradictions come true. But it seems that you are close to denying God’s omnipotence by arguing that history could not have unfolded in a different way than how it did.
If anyone here claims that God is inefficient and slow, I do agree with you that they would be irreverent. That is my point: we should not God according to human standards of efficiency.
But that’s my point. I’m not sure that evolution is wasteful. It may seem wasteful by human standards, but perhaps from God’s perspective it is not. We are simply in no position to judge.
You misunderstand. I’m not begging the question because I’m not here to argue that God created through evolution. I’m simply pointing out that your argument against that position is in appropriate and incoherent.
Even YECs believe that God uses pain and suffering to teach and shape us. Don’t you agree?
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In CONTEXT, where does Scripture say God is beyond our understanding?
You say that you only “claim allegiance to…truth in scripture”. So do you believe that a truth fact is the it is morally wrong to steal, lie and commit adultery?