Churches and Creation

SkyWriting

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Hi RC.There are a number of denominations that hold to a young earth creationist model as their official understanding. Southern Baptists are generally supportive of that understanding. However, as with most denominations that are fairly autonomous in congregational understanding, you will find the outlier here and there. Also as you pointed out, just because a particular denomination teaches young earth creation model, that doesn't mean that each individual member also then accepts that model.

I served for years with the Gideons International and I honestly thought that they were one of the most conservative bunch of christian men I'd met in one room. I was shocked when I was riding back with one of my brothers and the topic somehow got on the creation and he didn't really accept the young earth creationist model. When I explained what I believed about the time and processes of the creation event, he kind of looked over at me rather oddly and said, "You don't really believe that, do you?"

God bless,
In Christ, ted

The Gideons are bible focused and the Bible says the earth is ancient. It even says the hills are eternal.
 
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SkyWriting

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Who here is in a denomination or official church that stands up for Genesis as true? I am looking for those that insist on the direct creation of humans especially, or historical interpretation of Genesis, anything that rejects evolution and chemical stew as the origin of life.

I am just trying to find out what churches there are that do, and if possible what it is they officially say about it.

TIA

If God is responsible for every atom in the Cosmos, then what's the problem with how things change over time? "Change" in man is the focus of all scripture.
 
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miamited

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The Gideons are bible focused and the Bible says the earth is ancient. It even says the hills are eternal.

Hi sky,

Thanks for you response. Yes, I agree that the Gideons are bible focused.

I've had people tell me that an IBM Selectric typewriter is ancient, and yet they're less than 70 years old. Ancient is always a relative term. It does not define any specific length of time. If you google 'ancient fathers of the church' you will draw a list of men who are generally less than 2,000 years old. We find in the Proverbs a command that no one is to remove an 'ancient' boundary stone set up by your ancestors. Here, the word ancient is referring to something that couldn't have been, at the time it was written, more than a few hundred, possibly a thousand, years old.

So, I agree that the Scriptures do refer to the earth as ancient, but I don't agree that such a term necessarily is to mean that it's thousands or millions or billions of years old.

Eternal is a term to mean that from some point something lasts forever. According to the Scriptures, your soul is eternal. Do you believe that your soul existed billions of years ago? Or rather, once you were born upon the earth you were given an eternal soul? So the hills, once they were created, may well have been created to be eternal. As far as we know from the Scriptures, God is the only one who is both eternal and everlasting from beginning to end. Everything else had a beginning, and once created, may have been created to be eternal.

God bless,
In Christ, ted
 
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mark kennedy

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If God is responsible for every atom in the Cosmos, then what's the problem with how things change over time? "Change" in man is the focus of all scripture.
Thinfs change in man through the power of the Holy Spirit. God who created man a living soul is stiil the first cause of newbirth, just as he was the Creator of our first parent Adam.

Evolution is changes in alleles in populations over time, a process that began at creation, life evolved from there.
 
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SkyWriting

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Thinfs change in man through the power of the Holy Spirit. God who created man a living soul is stiil the first cause of newbirth, just as he was the Creator of our first parent Adam.

Evolution is changes in alleles in populations over time, a process that began at creation, life evolved from there.

History is always a fiction man creates in his mind. It can never be recreated in reality or considered certain, in any sense except in faith.
 
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mark kennedy

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History is always a fiction man creates in his mind. It can never be recreated in reality or considered certain, in any sense except in faith.
That's not true, history has subatantive and evidential proofs and disproofs. What your describing is eastern mysticism, notthe stepwise logic of known history.
 
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SkyWriting

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That's not true, history has subatantive and evidential proofs and disproofs. What your describing is eastern mysticism, notthe stepwise logic of known history.

In your own mind. But there is no process of proving anything formally, except in Math. Every word of history is a fiction of the writer's ego.
 
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miamited

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History is always a fiction man creates in his mind. It can never be recreated in reality or considered certain, in any sense except in faith.

Hi sky,

You should probably define the kind of 'history' that you're referring to. 'Event history' is fairly sure. We all know for example that during the 40's millions of Jews were murdered in death camps. 'Causal history' can be a bit more difficult to pin down. For example, what Hitler or Goering or Himmler were thinking, their thought processes that led them to do or act in a certain way, would likely be up to whoever is telling the story. Similarly, with the U.S. dropping atomic weapons on Japan. No one doubts that we did that. However, the cause and thinking of the players involved is up to interpretation.

Such things, as far as emotions involved, are also open to interpretation by whoever is telling the story. Americans will say that our dropping the atomic bombs on Japan was the best way for us to stop a bunch of bloodthirsty Japanese from overrunning the world. The Japanese are more likely to say that it was the way for a bunch of bloodthirsty Americans to obliterate tens of thousands of non-combatant civilians.

God bless,
In Christ, ted
 
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mark kennedy

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In your own mind. But there is no process of proving anything formally, except in Math. Every word of history is a fiction of the writer's ego.
I simply don't think that statement stands up to close scrutiny, it is untrue that history is subjective. People leave a history in their writings, art, culture, buildings, laws, roads and the development of lands, waterways and a broad religious foot print. Many a legacy has been meticulously preserved and not all history is lost to time or subject to the whims and caprices of human imagination, nor is history immune to them.
 
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SkyWriting

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I simply don't think that statement stands up to close scrutiny, it is untrue that history is subjective. People leave a history in their writings, art, culture, buildings, laws, roads and the development of lands, waterways and a broad religious foot print. Many a legacy has been meticulously preserved and not all history is lost to time or subject to the whims and caprices of human imagination, nor is history immune to them.

I didn't say history was subjective. I said it is fiction created by the writers ego. Each person summarizes what they think they know, and use it to create a fiction entirely based of their own individual experiences and assumptions.

Talk to two police officers and they will each tell a different story about what happened 60 minutes earlier. Even 5 minutes earlier. They have to have weeks of training to become a good observer of events.
 
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mark kennedy

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I didn't say history was subjective. I said it is fiction created by the writers ego. Each person summarizes what they think they know, and use it to create a fiction entirely based of their own individual experiences and assumptions.

Talk to two police officers and they will each tell a different story about what happened 60 minutes earlier. Even 5 minutes earlier. They have to have weeks of training to become a good observer of events.
In college I knew a cop, we took a couple of classes together. A little known fact, if all the witnesses are saying the exact same thing they throw it out. Eye witnesses invariably tell a slightly different story, that would appear to simply be a human quirk of perception. If everyone is telling the exact same thing, the exact same way, it starts to look contrived.

That's not what we are talking about, historical events, persons and places whether five minutes or five thousand years ago have an objective reality that is discernible. The subjective aspects of human reasoning are certainly a factor but they do not govern the underlying reality and there is such a thing as established history, confirmed and reliable. Calling all history fiction is gross hyperbole, I don't see such a statement having any basis in reality.
 
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SkyWriting

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In college I knew a cop, we took a couple of classes together. A little known fact, if all the witnesses are saying the exact same thing they throw it out. Eye witnesses invariably tell a slightly different story, that would appear to simply be a human quirk of perception. If everyone is telling the exact same thing, the exact same way, it starts to look contrived.

That's not what we are talking about, historical events, persons and places whether five minutes or five thousand years ago have an objective reality that is discernible. The subjective aspects of human reasoning are certainly a factor but they do not govern the underlying reality and there is such a thing as established history, confirmed and reliable. Calling all history fiction is gross hyperbole, I don't see such a statement having any basis in reality.

You just explained completely if it were true that there was a objective reality told by multiple people, it would be thrown out as a contrived story. You just explained that every person creates their own version of past events, which is fiction to every other person.

History, and all scripture, is the writing down of one of those fictions.

Pauls conversion is a great example, becasue there are no known similar cases where Jesus confronts a sinner and converts them. Not in the last 2000 years or before that, none on record. His fictional account undermines salvation by faith.
 
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Job 33:6

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I would say that I agree with the above, that history is more of a fictional constuct, in the sense that when I pick up a history book or an account of history, what I am looking at is essentially a written description of what someone conjured up in their mind.

It may or may not be based on factual occurances.

That's usually why we have things like photographs and audio/video recordings of things, to help us understand history, in addition to our biased writings of it.

One of my favorite history books goes by the title "a Patriots history of the United States". But there is also a book called "a people's history of the United States".

Both books describing the history of the US, but both written with different bias and point of views on various events. Both books being based on real occurancea, but not all details are necessarily factual, rather some are likely contrived, with each book in it's entirety being conjured up in the mind based on historic writings.
 
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Job 33:6

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And in regards to police work, we look at why so many people have been arguing for chest cameras for police officers. People prefer video recordings of physical occurance, over the fictional stories that we tell. Despite the fact that our stories are usually (but not always) based on real occurances, often we just don't get things right and we think of memories and do the best we can to record our ideas in words.
 
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Queller

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One of my assistants was a Southern Baptist and was very knowledgeable about biology in general and evolution in particular. He once told me that when people got up in Church and started preaching YE creationism, he just stayed quiet to avoid controversy.

Which is a pretty reasonable thing for him to do.
I went home once and went to the church I grew up in. The new pastor went on for a good 5 minutes about this cut he got on his knee and how science couldn't explain why it stopped bleeding and how it healed. I so wanted to ask him if he was related to Michael Behe.
 
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RC Tent

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If God is responsible for every atom in the Cosmos, then what's the problem with how things change over time? "Change" in man is the focus of all scripture.

My post does not mention a problem with the idea that things can change.

It refers to the origin of the human race.

There is more to that than "things change".
 
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RC Tent

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I would say that I agree with the above, that history is more of a fictional constuct, in the sense that when I pick up a history book or an account of history, what I am looking at is essentially a written description of what someone conjured up in their mind.

What exactly do you think someone "conjuring something up in their mind" is?

Where are we supposed to store acquired knowledge? What are we to share it with? Our feet??

That's usually why we have things like photographs and audio/video recordings of things, to help us understand history, in addition to our biased writings of it.

Oh dear, you don't know how biased interpretations of recorded events can be do you? Even what is recorded in the first place by such means is biased.
 
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Job 33:6

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What exactly do you think someone "conjuring something up in their mind" is?

Where are we supposed to store acquired knowledge? What are we to share it with? Our feet??



Oh dear, you don't know how biased interpretations of recorded events can be do you? Even what is recorded in the first place by such means is biased.

There's nothing wrong with writing information down. I'm just agreeing with the above statements with respect to the limitations that are present with respect to written records. Alternatively, with a photograph or video footage, in the least, we have an additional means of observation that are beyond certain forms of biased interpretation, and the informations is beyond a form which can be misinterpretted in certain ways.

A photograph of a cake gives a more clear understanding of said cake, than a verbal description. A verbal description could be misunderstood or loosely described both upon the Initial conjuring and transcription, as well as misunderstood during the ultimate reception and interpretation.

Which goes back to the original purpose of police officers wearing body cameras. Because cameras allow us to examine events with a greater amount of accuracy in scenarios where written or verbal thoughts otherwise may fail.
 
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