Are Young Earth Creationists Generally Stupid?

[Assyrian]

Good question.

A not-too-good answer is: because the evolution model called for billions of years of time. By limiting the time to less than a billion years, evolution model is broken.

This answer can certainly be further modified. But that is the idea. I don't care about an old earth. I just don't think evolution is true.

I am glad you describe this as a 'not so good answer' Juv. It means your claim the earth is millions rather than billions of years old is based, not on scripture, nor on scientific evidence, but because you want it to be true because you don't like evolution.

 

[theFijian]

So I don't know what you are proving, but you aren't talking about me or my ideas.

Tom I only have your words to go on, and strangely I'm not the only one who thinks you're proposing a veiled creation. Why do you think that could be?

If the sophisticated YECer is simply to propose their own 'interpretations' on the physical evidence then how is that any different to what happens now? Except that you expect them to keep their YEC beliefs out of science (I still see no reason why they would abide by this), but then aren't their interpretations going to be based on a YEC framework? If not, then just how would their interpretations differ from the prevailing scientific viewpoint? Any differing 'interpretaions' by sophisticated YECers would simply be identified as being rooted in creationism, summarily dismissed and hey presto back to square 1. Your idea solves nothing and simply creates different problems, I mean exactly why should a YECer keep their YEC worldview out of the science they perform, apart from you telling them it's a good idea to?

 

[juvenissun]

I am glad you describe this as a 'not so good answer' Juv. It means your claim the earth is millions rather than billions of years old is based, not on scripture, nor on scientific evidence, but because you want it to be true because you don't like evolution.

I said it is not that good exactly because it would make people think the way you think. It is not just that. In addition to the said reason, I do think the earth is young based on theological reasons.

 

[Assyrian]

Hundreds of millions of years is not young, it is what Old Earth Creationists thought before radiometric dating.

 

[lucaspa]

Science is about what it looks like, about the appearance of things. What reality actually is doesn't have to correspond with what it looks like at all. It is logically possible that God created the Earth 6,000 years ago and that it and the rest of the universe were created to look like it all began with a the Big Bang over thirteen billion years ago, and that the species evolved slowly over hundreds of millions of years.

Nice restatement of the Oomphalos argument. This fails on theological grounds. It is terrible religion. If you believe this, you end up destroying Christianity. Creationists try to recycle old arguments, ignoring the reasons those arguments were discarded in the first place.

In 1844 a pamphlet entitled Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, espousing an evolutionary viewpoint, was published. In response Philip Gosse, a minister in the Fundamentalist group called the Plymouth Brethren, wrote Oomphalos, published in 1857. In it Gosse made the first written argument that creation only LOOKS old. Notice that this is the same argument you are making. In it, Gosse even argued that Adam and Eve had navels because that is what one would expect in God-created creatures.
Gosse expected Oomphalos to be attacked by scientists. What he should have expected, but didn't, was the denunciation by the religious community. Asked to write a review of Oomphalos, his friend Charles Kingsley, a minister and author of Westward Ho! refused and wrote the following letter to Gosse.
"You have given the 'vestiges of creation theory' [the pamphlet discussed above] the best shove forward which it has ever had. I have a special dislike for that book; but, honestly, I felt my heart melting towards it as I read Oomphalos. Shall I tell you the truth? It is best. Your book is the first that ever made me doubt the doctrine of absolute creation, and I fear it will make hundreds do so. Your book tends to prove this - that if we accept the fact of absolute creation, God becomes God-the-Sometime-Deceiver. I do not mean merely in the case of fossils which pretend to be the bones of dead animals; but in ...your newly created Adam's navel, you make God tell a lie. It is not my reason, but my conscience which revolts here ... I cannot ...believe that God has written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind. To this painful dilemma you have brought me, and will, I fear, bring hundreds. It will not make me throw away my Bible. I trust and hope. I know in whom I have believed, and can trust Him to bring my faith safe through this puzzle, as He has through others; but for the young I do fear. I would not for a thousand pounds put your book into my children's hands."

And I would not, for any amount of money, teach this doctrine to anyone's children! This doctrine/argument makes God into the Prince of Lies. God tells lies. We must trust God for promises He made: resurrection, forgiveness of sins, etc. Now you say that God lies. How would we know that God did not lie about these things too?

No, it is not stupid to believe that the universe was created in 6 days in 4004 BC, as calculated by James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, around 1650.

Yes, it is. It makes God a liar.

Remember, science is about what things looks like, not about what the fundamental underlying truth actually is. That is beyond science.

This is the argument the Catholic Church tried to use with heliocentrism. Planets don't really orbit the sun in elliptical orbits; it just looks that way. Didn't work out too well for them. It isn't going to work out any better here.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

God the deceiver and the liar, eh? Since 1857?

Is that the best you've got? Sheesh.

How about: we aren't supposed to be able to find God through a sceptical approach (science) so if science could uncover evidence of the creation miracle as written in Genesis God would be discoverable without faithful seeking. For that reason, I would expect any miracle to be hidden. It would be hidden, not because God is a liar, but because we are fallen.

See, it's our fault, not God's. So, maybe a 150 year old reaction isn't the last word after all.

I don't really care what was said in 1857, or any other time, if it contains nothing more than a dogma that, you know, that a God who requires faith to know him is a liar if he doesn't leave evidence of his work all over the place like a common thief who hasn't got the brains to hide the evidence of what he's done. Just wait 6000 years and man with his science will be smarter than God and embarrass him in the act (of creation).

Are you actually telling me that this dogma has stood for 150 years without challenge?

 

[juvenissun]

Since I brought up the issue of accelerated tectonics, and I caught up the first show of 2012 yesterday, I like to make this comment:

The extreme version of the "accelerated tectonics" described in the movie 2012 is very interesting. In fact, it gives very good hints to the mechanism of the Global Flood. Of course, God says the Flood will never happen again. So I am talking about the first and the only one happened before.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

Juvenissun, I can see that you do not seperate science from religion. I had thought, based on your profile message, that you did.

 

[gluadys]

I do accept Mormons as Christians.

Well, I won't argue that issue. On this forum it is listed as an unorthodox belief and that description certainly fits. As far as I know, nothing says an unorthodox "Christian" is not saved. I don't think salvation is a matter of correct beliefs but a matter of faith. Nevertheless, they are unorthodox. There are reasons the apostles and Church fathers fought vigorously against what they called heresies and one of the most difficult battles was against the prevailing ideas known collectively as Gnosticism. One of the theological difficulties of YEC, including and possibly especially your 'sophisticated YEC' is that it turns well-meaning Christians into de facto Gnostics and a lot of it revolves around what we are speaking of when we say "God created the heavens and the earth."

I have no idea where you get the idea that if God created the world as in sophisticated YEC that it denies that God creates.

Well, what world did God create? A world that is 6,000 years old.
But what world do we experience? A world that is 13.7 billion years old.
The world we experience is not what God created.


Could that be? Maybe, in some other religion, maybe if we are speaking of some other God. Not in Christianity, not if we are speaking of the God who revealed himself to Abraham, Moses, Elijah and in Jesus.

Look at how, in the New Testament, the apostles continually affirm the reality of who Jesus was. "What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands..." 1John 1:1

They appeal to the testimony of their senses as a reliable witness of reality. But a YEC approach to the universe requires one to believe that our senses cannot be a reliable witness of reality. Nothing our senses tell us about the universe is real. Nothing science tells us about the universe is real.

Yet, the Psalmist tells us that the heavens declare the glory of God. What heavens? The spurious heavens that God never made? Surely the only heavens that can declare the glory of God are heavens that were really created? But according to YEC understanding, we cannot perceive those heavens--we only see a simulacrum, not a genuine creation. The genuine creation, the one that is really only 6,000 years old, is inaccessible to us.

One more thing, though. It is not the public scorn that does the harm to Christianity. It is the loss of converts. I am concerned with converting people to Christianity. Creation "science" does vast harm to that, which is my concern.

They go together.

The existence of what would be to you, I guess, a bunch of heretics, would do no harm to that at all.

Ah, but it does--on two bases. First, that they present themselves as Christians and so draw any scorn to Christians as well as themselves. Second, because the cost of preserving YEC, sophisticated or not, is to destroy a fundamental relationship of truth and trust between ourselves and our Creator.

A religion that cannot be based in and consistent with the physical reality that God created is not a biblically-based religion. It does not understand creation to be the reality which our ancestors in the faith believed it to be--a genuine creation which, through our experience of it, witnesses to its Maker.

 

[juvenissun]

Juvenissun, I can see that you do not seperate science from religion. I had thought, based on your profile message, that you did.

How should I modify my profile so you won't misunderstand?

 

[shernren]

How about: we aren't supposed to be able to find God through a sceptical approach (science) so if science could uncover evidence of the creation miracle as written in Genesis God would be discoverable without faithful seeking. For that reason, I would expect any miracle to be hidden. It would be hidden, not because God is a liar, but because we are fallen.

I think the Biblical picture of divine supernatural action is a bit different from what you are proposing.

Throughout the Bible we see God, or His empowered agents, perform miracles. Whether you want to take their descriptions as literal-historical or not, they are consistently described as openly accessible. That is to say, most miracles leave indisputable physical evidence. Indeed, for a miracle to be physically concealed would defeat the purpose of many miracles: for example, would the filling of the widow's jars with oil and flour be of any use to her if that oil and flour were hidden, so that she could not make bread with it?

(The one exception that comes to mind right now is when Elisha and his servant were surrounded by the Arameans(?), and Elisha called upon God to open the servant's eyes so that the servant could see the Lord's angels encamped around them. Even so, the angels themselves are not portrayed as doing anything (IIRC), and even if they did, the physical evidence of what they did would be as apparent to the Arameans as to Elisha and his servant, which brings me to my next point!)

Furthermore, non-believers are consistently confronted with the evidence for miracles. For example Jesus performs many healings in open sight: indeed, if evidence of His healings had been supernaturally concealed from the Pharisees, would they have had as much animosity against Him and reason to kill Him? The example par excellence is of course the resurrection, and in the Gospels their physical effects affect everyone from the faithful disciples, to the faith-ignorant/agnostic Roman soldiers, to the actively disbelieving Jewish authorities.

This pattern of openly visible divine action is seen throughout the Bible; why should it be any different in Genesis 1-11?

 

[Tom Cohoe]

Since we are nearly going in circles here, gluadys, I will only comment briefly.

There are reasons the apostles and Church fathers fought vigorously against what they called heresies and one of the most difficult battles was against the prevailing ideas known collectively as Gnosticism. One of the theological difficulties of YEC, including and possibly especially your 'sophisticated YEC' is that it turns well-meaning Christians into de facto Gnostics and a lot of it revolves around what we are speaking of when we say "God created the heavens and the earth."

A sophisticated YEC believes what was orthodox Christianity right up until the beginning of the modern scientific era. And now that has become gnosticism? It doesn't seem anything like gnosticism to me.

Well, what world did God create? A world that is 6,000 years old.
But what world do we experience? A world that is 13.7 billion years old.
The world we experience is not what God created.

We do not 'experience' the age of the universe. We infer it. What we infer is a model. What we experience is what is, whether it is 6 thousand or 13 1/2 billion years old. If God created the universe 6,000 years ago, then he did not create the modeled 13 1/2 billion year old universe. Then he created a 6,000 year old universe, and that created universe is what we experience. Neither way do we experience the age of the universe. Either way, we do experience what was created.

Nothing our senses tell us about the universe is real.

What our senses tell us under sophisticated YECism is as real as it is in a 13 1/2 billion year old universe.

Nothing science tells us about the universe is real.

Science tells us that we are made of atoms. Under sophisticated YEC, this is true. Atoms are as real one way as the other.

we only see a simulacrum, not a genuine creation. The genuine creation, the one that is really only 6,000 years old, is inaccessible to us.

????

It is accessible. We live in it and experience it and learn about it whether it was formed in the distant past or the near past.

A religion that cannot be based in and consistent with the physical reality that God created is not a biblically-based religion.

You are saying that believing in the literal truth of Genesis cannot be part of a biblically based religion? Are you aware how absurd this is?

 

[lucaspa]

God the deceiver and the liar, eh? Since 1857?

Is that the best you've got?

It's good enough that you didn't address the argument that, if the universe only LOOKS old, then God is deceiving us. That someone found the fatal flaw in the argument back in 1857 does not change that the argument is flawed. I understand that it is possibly embarassing to you to discover that the argument has been rejected by Christians that long and you never knew.

How about: we aren't supposed to be able to find God through a sceptical approach (science) so if science could uncover evidence of the creation miracle as written in Genesis God would be discoverable without faithful seeking.

Does not work. You see, it would be really easy for God to make a universe that looks young and all the physical evidence matches young earth creationism. What you are doing, Tom, is finding a motive for the deception, not denying that there is one. For us to trust God, it doesn't matter what the motive for the deception is. The only thing that matters is that there is deception when there doesn't have to be. For that reason, I would expect any miracle to be hidden. It would be hidden, not because God is a liar, but because we are fallen.

Tom, think about it. For those present at the Exodus, did they really need faith? Was God "undiscoverable"? Hardly. They had seen with their own eyes God directly intervening in human history: the plagues, Passover, the pillars of fire, the Parting of the Red Sea, etc.

Similarly, for the disciples, they hardly relied on "faith". They saw and talked to the risen Jesus. Thomas was certainly a skeptic, and Jesus did not mind showing him the nail holes and the wounds in his side. Jesus didn't try to disguise the physical evidence that he had really been killed and now was resurrected. So why would you think God would go to all the trouble to hide that He created the universe in 6 days in the recent past?

I don't really care what was said in 1857, or any other time, if it contains nothing more than a dogma

It's not "dogma". It is a reasoning, based on what we know and believe about God, that the argument that the earth only looks old cannot be true. Why? Because it paints a false picture of God.

So, I have to ask: why are you so wedded to a young earth? How does an old earth threaten your beliefs?

a God who requires faith to know him is a liar if he doesn't leave evidence of his work all over the place like a common thief who hasn't got the brains to hide the evidence of what he's done.

Who said God did not leave evidence all over the place? What do you think Christians believe science does? We believe God did leave evidence all over His Creation on just how He created. Instead of creating the way you think He did, God created by the processes discovered by science!

Just wait 6000 years and man with his science will be smarter than God and embarrass him in the act (of creation).

Why would you think we will be smarter than God? If God worked the way you say He does, then we should already have "embarrassed" Him in the act of creation: we should have seen new species popping into existence before our very eyes. At the least, we should have seen new stars become naked eye visible in the sky as their light finally just now reached us. After all, if the earth is 6,000 years old, then the light from any stars beyond 6,000 light years would not have reached us yet. Just like, 5,000 years after creation, light from stars 5,000 light years would finally reach the earth. But that isn't what happened, did it?

So, what's the motivation for God to deceive us about the distance to the stars and the age of the universe?

Are you actually telling me that this dogma has stood for 150 years without challenge?

You weren't able to successfully challenge it! All you could do was suggest motivation for why God would lie to us. At least in Mark 10 and Matthew 14, when Jesus found errors in scripture, he said a man made the error and deceived us, not God.

One more thing, Tom. You try to disparage Kingsley's argument because it is 150 years old. You are trying to tell us that being 150 years old disqualifies it from being "true". But think about it, the "dogmas" of the Virgin Birth and Trinity are over 10 times as old. Would you accept anyone arguing that they are wrong because they are old? When living in a glass house, you have to be careful about throwing stones.

 

[lucaspa]

A sophisticated YEC believes what was orthodox Christianity right up until the beginning of the modern scientific era.

That is not the case. Back in the 400s Augustine argued against a literal Genesis and using an interpretation of scripture to deny what we see in the universe around us.

the "gnostic" part of your post is that some of you are privy to special, private knowledge: in this case the age of the universe. The public knowledge from examining the the physical univers God made, you say, is wrong. Only what you tells us about the age is correct, and how did you get that knowledge? Thru a private interpretation of scripture. The idea of private knowledge -- gnosis -- is the heart of Gnosticism. Also, Gnosticism has a deceitful, malevolent creator god. You are bringing that back, too.

We do not 'experience' the age of the universe. We infer it. What we infer is a model.

What we have is a theory, not a "model". "Models" in science are different than how you are using the term. We infer, from our experiences. For instance, our experience is that there are no isotopes with half lives under 50 million years on or in the earth. We infer from that that the earth is much older than 50 million years. This inference is consistent with the theory that the earth is 4.55 billion years old.

If God created the universe 6,000 years ago, then he did not create the modeled 13 1/2 billion year old universe. Then he created a 6,000 year old universe, and that created universe is what we experience.

But we do not experience that universe. That universe would have very different experiences in it than what we have. I have already pointed one of those out: the experience of seeing new stars appear thru history as their light first reached us. The Oomphalos theory that you are promoting was devised precisely because we do not experience a 6,000 year old universe. It was devised to say that the universe is 6,000 years old even tho we experience living in a much older universe. Unfortunately, the way to do that makes God a liar.

What our senses tell us under sophisticated YECism is as real as it is in a 13 1/2 billion year old universe.

What a "sophisticated YECism" has to do is deny that those experience are real. Instead, those experiences are put there as part of a deception plan on the part of God.

We live in it and experience it and learn about it whether it was formed in the distant past or the near past.

But according to you we don't learn about the real universe. We learn about the deception. Let's examine this by another example: the fake 3rd Army the Allies set up in England in early 1944. The German reconnaissance flights experienced (photographed, saw) tanks, trucks, camps, etc. But they were not real tanks, trucks, camps, etc. The tanks and trucks were rubber blow-up dummies. The camps were empty of soldiers. So what the Germans learned about Allied troop deployments in England was false. All this was, of course, to convince the Germans that the invasion would come in the Pais de Calais, not Normandy.

You have the same thing. Supposedly we look at erosion processes, the rate of rock formation, the speed of light, the rate of radioactive decay etc. and infer how old the earth and universe are from that. Just like the Germans inferred the presence of troops in southeast England. But none of those inferences relates to a real universe. It relates to a fake universe and earth -- an old universe and earth. Instead, you say, the earth and universe are really young.

No matter how you slice it, you have God telling us lies.

You are saying that believing in the literal truth of Genesis cannot be part of a biblically based religion? Are you aware how absurd this is?

Not at all.

1. Because a literal Genesis 1-3 itself tells you that it is not literal! If you read Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 and then read 2:4 to the end of chapter 3, both literally, they contradict! So, if the literal readings contradict, that should be a neon sign to you that a literal reading is the wrong one.
2. A "biblically based religion" is supposed to come up with theology. By doing a "literal truth of Genesis", you actually lose a "biblically based religion" because you miss the vital, indispensable, theological message.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

First off, I am not "wedded to a young earth". Have you read this thread?

The only thing that matters is that there is deception when there doesn't have to be.

Not only is there a motive, there is also no deception. If Genesis is literally true than the truth is revealed in Genesis. You are assuming that Genesis is not literally true in order to prove that Genesis is not literally true. That's called circular reasoning.

You can believe that Genesis is not literally true, and you can be consistent within your own theology, but you cannot say that God has deceived the young earth creationist under the assumption that Genesis is literally true if the Earth only appears to be old. Then, the young Earth creationist is not deceived. Through his faith, he believes the Earth to be young because Genesis tells him so. He is therefore undeceived.

I am sorry that you were not able to see the circularity of the "God the deceiver" argument, but you shouldn't be embarrassed. It is harder for someone who is metaphysically commited to suspect that a statement leading to a contradiction in his own metaphysics might not lead to a contradiction under different metaphysical assumptions. Since I am not wedded to either specific OE or specific YE assumptions, it is not hard for me to see the flaw.

Tom, think about it. For those present at the Exodus, did they really need faith? Was God "undiscoverable"? Hardly. They had seen with their own eyes God directly intervening in human history: the plagues, Passover, the pillars of fire, the Parting of the Red Sea, etc.

I intend to answer this in my reply to shemren, so briefly:

God has always revealed himself to people he has chosen for the purpose. His revelations to them cannot be used by the rest of us to "put God to the test", nor was his revelation to them the result of their putting God to the test. God chose these witnesses, not the other way around. The rest of us have only faith to go on vis à vis these biblical miracles. When science, OTOH, investigates these miracles, the investigator is doing the choosing. Since a scientist's attitude is, by definition, skeptical, he will not find evidence of God through his miraculous work.

This is all quite consistent with Christ's words in Luke 8:10:

He said, "The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, "'though seeing, they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand.'
​

'Though seeing, they may not see'. What more do you need about hiding the truth from skeptics? These are the words of Christ himself. Without faith you will not see.

Similarly, for the disciples

Similarly, the disciples were chosen.

So why would you think God would go to all the trouble to hide that He created the universe in 6 days in the recent past?

I hope you are beginning to understand.

So, I have to ask: why are you so wedded to a young earth?

I am not. Not one little bit. You are the one wedded. I can see that either view can be consistently held.

Instead of creating the way you think He did, God created by the processes discovered by science!

Why don't you read the thread so you wiull have a better understanding of what I think?

You are trying to tell us that being 150 years old disqualifies it from being "true".

I am not. Sheesh! Pay attention here: I disparaged that the age of the dogma qualified it as worthy of respect as the truth. That's a very different thing from saying that it is false because it is old. I hope you are able to understand this.

Your biggest errors are in your assumptions about me. Perhaps it would bore you to read the whole thread, but it's not, you know, a book.

 

[gluadys]

Since we are nearly going in circles here, gluadys, I will only comment briefly.



A sophisticated YEC believes what was orthodox Christianity right up until the beginning of the modern scientific era. And now that has become gnosticism? It doesn't seem anything like gnosticism to me.

Not so. YECism is a very modern viewpoint and not very orthodox at all. I never even heard of it until the 1980s although it apparently originated in the 1950s. It is not that I never heard of people who argued against evolution, but most of the anti-evolution stuff I heard of pre-1980 was of the old-earth variety which was the orthodox position of the late 19th century.

Gnosticism is based on the idea that the physical world is appearance only. When Gnosticism invaded the early Church, they taught that Christ did not really incarnate as a human being. The incarnation was an illusion, not a concrete physical reality. That's why John in his first letter hammers home that we have seen and heard and touched and handled---that is anti-Gnostic language. That is why the Apostles and Nicene Creed recount that Jesus was conceived, born, suffered, crucified, died and was buried--and even descended into the abode of the dead. Gnostics denied that these things really physically happened.

YEC does the same sort of denial with the physical created world. The actual, concrete, physical world we experience with our minds and our senses is deemed a mere appearance, like the Gnostics' vision of the Incarnate Christ. It is not what really is. It is not what God created. And what God did create is not accessible to mere human investigation. It has to be revealed by those in the know (gnostho=know).

We do not 'experience' the age of the universe. We infer it. What we infer is a model. What we experience is what is, whether it is 6 thousand or 13 1/2 billion years old. If God created the universe 6,000 years ago, then he did not create the modeled 13 1/2 billion year old universe.

We infer by observation and by reasoning about our observations. We use sensory perception to observe---senses we are told were given us by our creator for our use so that we could make our way in the world and even behold enough of creation to perceive God's glory in it. We use our minds to reason--a gift often associated with the teaching that we are created in the very image of God, with some measure of divine capacities. If sense and reason are God's gifts to us, does it make sense that what we infer about the creation he has given us is so completely false? What can we say about perceptions that cannot show us the world as God actually made it? What can we say about the power of the mind that fails so miserably to reason correctly from observation? If the very tools God gave us to experience creation so consistently deceive us about the nature of the created order, what does that tell us about God if not that he wants us to be deceived?

What our senses tell us under sophisticated YECism is as real as it is in a 13 1/2 billion year old universe.

No, it is not. In one case they are connecting us to a world God actually made. In the other case they are telling us nothing at all about the world God created; they are only showing us an imaginary scenario that is hiding the world God actually created.

Then he created a 6,000 year old universe, and that created universe is what we experience. Neither way do we experience the age of the universe. Either way, we do experience what was created.



It is accessible. We live in it and experience it and learn about it whether it was formed in the distant past or the near past.

No, we do not experience a 6,000 year old earth or universe. You have only to raise your eyes to the stars to know that is not the case. In a 6,000 year old universe, most of those stars could not been seen yet. They are too far away for their light to have reached us in a mere 6,000 years.

Or consider Neil Shubin's book "Your Inner Fish" which recounts the many indications in your own body of an ancestry that goes back 400 million years.

We do not experience a 6,000 year old earth or universe.

We experience an earth that is 4.5 billion years old and a universe that is 13.7 billion years old. And the only important question is whether that universe is real. Did God create it?

You are saying that believing in the literal truth of Genesis cannot be part of a biblically based religion? Are you aware how absurd this is?

I don't know about your bible, but mine says "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" and "These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created." and "Long ago you [God] laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the work of your hands."

It does not say God made a pair of universes: one real and tucked away where no person can see or touch or hear it and another that is an illusion for our perceptions to play with. What sort of testimony is creation to its Creator if, in terms of our concrete experience with it, it is only an appearance? That is as gnostic as an incarnation of Christ that is only an appearance and not real flesh and bones.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

That is not the case. Back in the 400s Augustine argued against a literal Genesis and using an interpretation of scripture to deny what we see in the universe around us.

I doubt that. He told us not to take a stand on how the world is which could be embarrassing to Christianity if it was learned that the world was different than the stood position. If you are going to claim that he argues against the Genesis cosmology, I need quotations and source (since Augustine wrote a lot). Nevertheless, it is Augustine's advice (as I represent it here) which I have proferred to a YEC Baptist I know in an attempt to convince him that he need not read Genesis literally. It is YECers that don't follow Augustine's advice, not me. I can't make them. I take what Augustine says very seriously.

Part of the reason I doubt that Augustine advised specifically against a literal interpretation of Genesis is that, Augustine notwithstanding, Genesis was read as literal truth until modern science. Yet Augustine has always been held as a reverred father of the Church. It is unlikely that Christendom would have believed in the literal truth of Genesis and had the overwhelming respect for Augustine that it did, had he cast doubt on the literal truth of Genesis.

the "gnostic" part of your post is that some of you are privy to special, private knowledge:

Far from claiming to have privileged knowledge, I have said that the reason I am not wedded to either OE model or a YEC model is that I know that I cannot know whether one or the other is true.

Also, Gnosticism has a deceitful, malevolent creator god. You are bringing that back, too.

The dogma again.

What we have is a theory, not a "model". "Models" in science are different than how you are using the term. We infer, from our experiences. For instance, our experience is that there are no isotopes with half lives under 50 million years on or in the earth. We infer from that that the earth is much older than 50 million years. This inference is consistent with the theory that the earth is 4.55 billion years old.

I am not interested in carrying on an argument about the definition of 'model'. But, to show you that I am not making up my meanings here's a quotation from an article on Scientific theory:

A scientific theory can be thought of as a model of reality
​

Beyond that, you can call it what you want.

But we do not experience that universe. That universe would have very different experiences in it than what we have. I have already pointed one of those out: the experience of seeing new stars appear thru history as their light first reached us.

Yes, the very argument I gave my YEC Baptist friend.

The Oomphalos theory that you are promoting

I am not promoting it. Why don't you read the thread?

Unfortunately, the way to do that makes God a liar.

A liar now too, eh?

1. Because a literal Genesis 1-3 itself tells you that it is not literal! If you read Genesis 1:1 to 2:3 and then read 2:4 to the end of chapter 3, both literally, they contradict! So, if the literal readings contradict, that should be a neon sign to you that a literal reading is the wrong one.

Yes, possibly, although it would help if you would be more specific. I assume YECers have their way to deal with it. It is not of interest to me. I am not a YECer and am not trying to convert anyone to it. I am interested in YECer interference in science. For that purpose, I am not going to answer every contradiction in the Bible, or even a single one of them. I am interested in showing that a particular YEC interpretation of the Bible can be held without any need to fight science.

A "biblically based religion" is supposed to come up with theology. By doing a "literal truth of Genesis", you actually lose a "biblically based religion" because you miss the vital, indispensable, theological message.

I am not interested in debating the "vital, indispensible, theological message". We would probably mostly agree. Where we did not would not be relevant to this conversation.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

Not so. YECism is a very modern viewpoint and not very orthodox at all. I never even heard of it until the 1980s although it apparently originated in the 1950s. It is not that I never heard of people who argued against evolution, but most of the anti-evolution stuff I heard of pre-1980 was of the old-earth variety which was the orthodox position of the late 19th century.

gluadys, I said "up until the beginning of the modern scientific era". That was earlier than the 19th century.

Gnosticism is based on the idea that the physical world is appearance only.

It's a lot more than that, as I see you know. Sophisticated YEC is not gnosticism. You can't take two things that have somethiong in common and say they are the same thing. Otherwise, I could say all humans are Nazis because Nazis breathe and so do all other humans.

YEC does the same sort of denial with the physical created world. The actual, concrete, physical world we experience with our minds ...

We do not experience the world with our minds. We experience it with our senses. The differences is the difference between the subjective and the objective. No matter how much we believe in the model in our minds as reality, reality could be different.

It is not what really is.

Was, if you want to begin to approach what I'm talking about. And we do not experience the past.

It is not what God created. And what God did create is not accessible to mere human investigation. It has to be revealed by those in the know (gnostho=know).

YECism has nothing to do with gnosticism. According to it, you read the bible and believe it. No secret knowledge revealed only to the initiated. It's open to all.

what does that tell us about God if not that he wants us to be deceived?

Yes, but as I've demonstrated, 'deceived' is not the only spin you can put on it. Atheists argue, "if God exists, why does he deceive us into thinking he doesn't exist by not manifesting himself, and by putting contradictions in the Bible?"

No, it is not. In one case they are connecting us to a world God actually made. In the other case they are telling us nothing at all about the world God created; they are only showing us an imaginary scenario that is hiding the world God actually created.

Yes it is. But never mind. If you want to say that the wind blowing on our faces when we step outside is not as real if sophisticated YECism is true as the wind is if sophisticated YECism is not true, I can't stop you, just as I cannot stop a YECer from insisting that his interpretation of the bible must be true.

It does not say God made a pair of universes: one real and tucked away where no person can see or touch or hear it and another that is an illusion for our perceptions to play with.

Sophisticated YECism holds that God mad only one universe.

 

[gluadys]

gluadys, I said "up until the beginning of the modern scientific era". That was earlier than the 19th century.

YECism did not exist until well into the modern scientific era.

It's a lot more than that, as I see you know. Sophisticated YEC is not gnosticism. You can't take two things that have somethiong in common and say they are the same thing. Otherwise, I could say all humans are Nazis because Nazis breathe and so do all other humans.

That's why I said "de facto" Gnostics. It is not as if they are consciously committed to Gnosticism. Or that they take all of it holus-bolus. As if one could. Gnostics had (and have) many different and not always compatible views themselves.

We do not experience the world with our minds. We experience it with our senses.

We can't experience it with our senses unless our minds are also active. A person in a coma does not experience the world with their senses because the shut-down of the mind cuts off access to the senses.

The differences is the difference between the subjective and the objective. No matter how much we believe in the model in our minds as reality, reality could be different.

Not if the model is well-built on our senses and our senses are -- as God made them to be -- portals to created reality. If reality is very different from what our sense and reason tell us, it is a lie. If God created it, God created a lie.

Was, if you want to begin to approach what I'm talking about. And we do not experience the past.

The examples I gave were of present observations. But they cannot exist unless the earth/universe is old.

YECism has nothing to do with gnosticism. According to it, you read the bible and believe it. No secret knowledge revealed only to the initiated. It's open to all.

According to YEC, if you do not agree with their interpretation, you do not believe the bible. That is an insult to the vast majority of Christian believers. It is typical of YECists to insist they are not interpreting scripture, but the decision to read Genesis 1 as if it were a science text is an interpretation, and not a good one.

Yes, but as I've demonstrated, 'deceived' is not the only spin you can put on it. Atheists argue, "if God exists, why does he deceive us into thinking he doesn't exist by not manifesting himself, and by putting contradictions in the Bible?"

And atheists would not be able to use contradictions in the bible if they had not been taught by some religious leaders that there are no contradictions in the bible. And where does that come from? Mostly from a dictation theory of inspiration that makes the Word of God identical with the words of the bible. Did you know that not a single biblical writer refers to a written text when speaking of the Word of God? The written text we now call the bible is always referred to as "writings" (graphai in Greek, scripturae in Latin) and is never called the Word of God. We should go back to the earlier practice of referring to the bible as Holy Writ. A good Anglo-Saxon equivalent to biblical usage.

As for God not manifesting himself--why should he do so at anyone's beck and call?

Sophisticated YECism holds that God mad only one universe.

It's just not the one we see.

 

[Tom Cohoe]

Good morning, gluadys (and all other readers)

YECism did not exist until well into the modern scientific era.

The Venerable Bede, for one example from many, in the 8th century, calculated the date of creation as 3952. Literal interpretation of the Bible coexisted with metaphorical interpretation all the way back. There are young earth creationists among the Jews as well. There's been a modern resurgence of it, but it sure isn't something that started in 1850, 1650, or 1450.

If you insist on conflating sensual awareness and mind (there's a lot more to mind than awareness), literal reading of Genesis and gnosticism, hiding evidence that allows skeptical test of God's miraculous creation and lying, you will never be able to tolerate sophisticated YECism. These conflations, unfortunately, obstruct clear thinking.

You aren't going to go to Hell for letting go of dogmatic stances and casuistic reasoning. I, personally, don't like young Earth creationism(!) but I can see that metaphysically it can be adopted without conflict with science. I am not afraid of a supposed harm from a movement sweeping bible literalists that gets them out of public policy and science. I see a sophisticated YECism as a step that would bring relief from the paranoid attacks on science, could enable YECers to participate fully in real science that could even be a middle ground as a step to a more sensible, metaphorical interpretation of Genesis as science is seen as something benign rather than as something hostile to Christianity. YECers talking about the creation of an "aged universe" are taking the first steps toward a non hostile attitude about science.

I am sorry that you cannot see this as something positive.