From content YEC to depressed atheist

I think for many people the Scopes Monkey trial influenced their faith as much as anything out of the ancient Church Counsels that defined Cristology and the Doctrine of the Trinity found in the Nicean Creed.....which is unfortunate.



A quote from Saint Augustine's "The Literal Meaning of Genesis"

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

A quote from Saint Augustine's "The Literal Meaning of Genesis" : Christianity

JohnClay said:

During my first year of university I wanted to try and find the truth - so I looked at books

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IF you want to know the truth then you need to seek to know God. You can not turn to man. The Holy Spirit is to be our Comforter, our Guide and our Teacher. We do not need man to teach us. Just read the Bible and the Holy Spirit will help you.

I am YEC and OEC. As a dispensationist I believe that the age we are living in began 12,990 years ago. There was a massive extinction at the time and 90% of the species died. I have studied Science and the Bible extensively and everything is in agreement. There is no conflict. Also I am a Theistic Evolutionist.

Basicly it took God 12.9 Billion years to create Adam and Eve. As they say we are "star stuff" according to Carl Sagan and Neil Degrasse Tyson. We find Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden around 6,000 years ago. In Genesis chapter 3 we read about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the serpent. That is a difficult story to understand and I am still working on this.

As a Christian we die to self so that we are born again and a new creation in Christ. I know a lot of people that are unhappy with the way their life is and they are very excited about being born again and becoming a new person. God gives us Grace to deal with all the issues we have to deal with every day of our life. He gives us the strength to go through whatever we have to go though. He gives us the answer to ever question and the solution to very problem we will ever have in life. He will never let us down and He will never disappoint us. He is always there for us when we need Him.

Pavel Mosko said:

Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics

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This door swings both ways. We need to spend time to read science and time to read our Bible. Then we can see how much they are in agreement with each other. Far to often people want to study one or the other but not both. I have known PhD's in Science that do not even have a third grade understanding of the Bible. So they are not really qualified to comment on something that they know so little about. Just like there are Christians that waste time debating evolution when they should spend their time to read and study their Biology book. Although for some the discussion does draw them in and get them interested to study and learn more.

God is far bigger than any debate over evolution vs YEC. God is also much bigger than any contradictions that appear in the Bible or in the world around us. God can exist without humans or animal life, but the animals and humans cannot exist without God sustaining them. God always has been and always will be.

I'm flexible on the matter. Old-Earthers have some theological questions to answer for that stance, and Young-Earthers lack scientific evidence to back their stance. The "days" in Genesis don't have to be literal, 24-hour days. What I do believe is that God created it, ultimately. And that he is capable of creating it in 144 hours, regardless of whether or not he in fact did.

This Hebrew scholar does not believe it has to be 144 continuous hours, with the way the text is rendered. He's a conservative believer with a PH.D in early Semetic languages, which means he knows the Biblical Hebrew as well as any man today.

JohnClay said:

YEC means "young earth creationist" (who believe the universe is about 6000 years old)

In primary school my science teacher said that he didn't believe in evolution or that we came from monkeys. I also went to a travelling museum about dinosaurs and it had a display that said that some people believe we come from Adam and Eve. When I started high school there was a travelling "Creation Bus" that showed a video saying that legends of dragons were based on sightings of dinosaurs. I bought some books and Creation magazines that made a persuasive case that YEC is true.

Then I moved and started going to a Lutheran high school. Over the years I bought more YEC materials and went to presentations. I started trying to convince staff of the school (librarian, teachers, pastor) that YEC is true but none of them became YECs. Well one science teacher did, about 10+ years later. In year 12 I saw an anti-YEC article in a youth science magazine and I wrote to them a letter that was several pages long about the evidence for YEC. I also wrote them a short letter that was published. At around that time I said to God in my mind "I want to know the truth, no matter how depressing it is". Me talking to God like that is very rare. Then I got a very strong tingling sensation over my body - that's one of the only times that has happened to me.

I also heard about a popular anti-YEC book called "Telling Lies for God" by Ian Plimer. In university I made a web page about it which found dozens of problems in his book. The web page was part of a site I made called "Dirt or Slime" - you can see some of it here:
Wayback Machine

About the title of the site:

During my first year of university I wanted to try and find the truth - so I looked at books about the evolution of humans, etc. Then I was contacted by a former creationist from America - Edward T Babinski:
Ed Babinski

He also wrote "Leaving The Fold: Testimonies Of Former Fundamentalists". He told me about the Green River formation - this convinced me that the earth must be at least a few million years old so then YEC can't be true. I already believed that the Gap Theory ("Lucifer's Flood" - I think Benny Hinn believes in that) and the Day-Age theories couldn't be true. I believed that the Bible must be 100% true or otherwise the God of the Bible isn't true - so I became an atheist who believed in a 100% physical reality. As a YEC I had been comforted by the belief in the after life and being able to pray to the creator of the universe so I didn't mind too much of my depressing history of dealing with girls. But when I became an atheist all I had was my earthly life so I became depressed.

Here is an interesting comic about a YEC who also goes directly to atheism after he finds problems in YEC:

It's here -> Evolution and Creation Science, The Bible Taught It First

Now I believe that there is an intelligent force making itself known to me through coincidences:
Hearing songs with seemingly supernatural significance

I also believe in guided evolution where an intelligent force intervened in small ways from time to time leading there to be a lot of amazing flowers and birds, etc. Perhaps it involves a simulation (like a computer game) with AI intervening from time to time so that things like birds evolve, etc. It is just a hunch though.

I think the best interpretation of Genesis is this:
Framework interpretation (Genesis) - Wikipedia
I don't know of any problems with it. I hadn't heard of it before earlier in my life.

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Would you consider a hypothesis that could both encapsulate an untouched reading of the 7 day creation and allow science to have and explain it's evolutionary narrative any way it likes?

If you look at gen 1:1- gen 2:4 this given an account of creation in seven day. Now in this account there is no mention of when this 7 days took place. nor does it say at the end of seven days we have a completely earth. We get this idea because of what is described in chapter 2. but chapter 2 is garden narrative only it even says so in chapter two which mean's it has it's own unique time line which does not correspond to the chapter 1 time line. man made on day one in chapter 2 and in chapter one light was created day one. ect.. The garden according to verses 456 took 1 day to create and complete everything in it.

Meaning what was happening in the garden did not reflect the world outside of the garden till about 6000 years ago where the YEC got something right (the exile from the garden) but again there is no born on date to the events in gen 1 and end of chapter two and the beginning of chapter three also has no time line. these where always put on unscripturally by religion, but in fact look for yourself in the first three chapters describe the three major events of creation and the only time line assigned was the exile, everything else is presumed.

You also have to consider in the hebrew the word birds or whales or cattle never coincided with how we today classify animals. a bird is anything flying creature over a given size. other wise it was a flying insect. that means bats large insects even certain fish could be classified as birds. the word in hebrew simply mean flying creature. Same with cattle is any creature the eats plant life, like wise whales do not refer specifically to the genius and species we understand to be whales.. it refers to any marine creature of a give size or larger. They simply did not have a way to identify animals as we do. So you can not assume on day 6 when the beast of the fields where created it simple means cows. this could have been some unknown creature that would eventually evolve into a cow.

Did they have cows in the garden? yes it was a completed picture of earth where man in the garden was a picture of what evolved man out side the garden would have been 6000 years ago. everything outside the garden simply had to evolve while everything in the garden was complete and lived with God till the fall 6000 years ago.

JohnClay said:

@drich0150:
Hi I don't quite understand what you're saying. Do you believe that the universe is about 13 billion years old and the earth is about 4.5 billion years old? How do you explain the sun, moon and stars being created on day 4 while plants being created on day 3?

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I am saying with this view the world could be 100 bazillion years old and genesis 1:1 through gen 2:4 could still legitimately fit in any scientific narrative you like or need.


Remember like with the traditional church telling of these events we use fill in material we assume things in the traditional telling like time lines and we assume levels of completeness which the bible in Gen 1 does not give us.

Like wise none of the fill in material I am going to use is actually written in the bible but at the same time the bible does not contradict what I am saying either. I point to spans of possible time and perspective in how the bible or this story was written to give a perspective not from God as the church would assume but from a simple man tasked by God to record what he sees. I say that not to say the genesis account is not holy I am simply saying the account written was not written from God 1st person perspective as many in the church believe.

I am just providing a possible interpretation that will allow a full and unmolested telling of this creation narritive in how it can jive with what is scientifically known.

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.. There is nothing to indicate this was the first day of the creation of the earth. Meaning in the beginning of everything even before the 7 day population of earth God created the heavens/universe and then earth or what would become the earth because at this point Gen 1:2 say the earth was without form and void/empty of everything. Day one does not start till gen 1:3
3 Then God said, “Let there be light!” And light began to shine. 4 He saw the light, and he knew that it was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God named the light “day,” and he named the darkness “night.”

Are you familiar with how the book of revelation was written? God took John of patmos and sat him in a spot and told him to write down what he saw.

The book of genesis is written in a similar fashion as it is not written in a first person perspective. IE it is not written as God saw it. Let's say moses or whom ever God sat down to view creation did something similar which is why we get an observational account of creation, meaning the writer was placed in a bubble and watch creation unfold and wrote down what he saw and understood.

so in the beginning God created everything in the universe. such a vast and complex thing it was shorten to what the writer could understand. "the heavens and the earth, but earth was without any form and completely void of life."

Then Day 1 god brought light to the world. not the sun, but visible light to earth for the first time. (who knows for sure but his visible continent is supposed to radiate light) Or maybe the skies where not clear enough to see sun light and God simply began the process of settling the skys. Not like rain clouds but skies like Jupiter or neptune, were it is said there is so much material/elements/dust in the atmosphere of jupiter that the surface never sees sun light.

So day one God settles the atmosphere and the first hint of light is observed by the writer of genesis 1.

Day two that material solidified and separated sky from seas

Day three seas filled in the low places revealing dry land

Day four enough of the atmospheric debris settled to see the sun moon and stars for the first time.
not that the sun moon and stars where hatched that day it is just from a planet side observational view, the sun moon and stars where first visible from the planet side.

Remember the creation account is the creation of this world and of the garden. as nothing outside of pre day 1 and day 4 makes claim to the rest of the universe nd both of those can be esialy explained with the idea of a third party recorder.

Also note that day 4 is not about sun moon and stars as it is about time. Day four was the first possible measure of time. Meaning anything before day four was impossible to say that a day was 24 hours as there was no celestial 'clock'/sun to measure a day by. So again You can have a literal 7 days here if you assume the light made on day one was a obscured sun, but you also have to consider what the passage is actually telling you and in this case it goes out of the way that time or our understanding of it started day 4. more so than the hatching of the celestial bodies.

sun moon day four day three plants simple answer.

I explain above I believe the sun moon and stars where a pre day one creation as observed in gen 1:1 and 1:2 being a pre day one event. and that earth like other planets in our solar system was covered by a very dense atmosphere where little to no sun light hits the surface. (which still hapens on our planet today/places on the surface where sun light can not reach because of density between the sun and the surface is too great for sun light to reach the surface of the planet. Then day one God begins to settle the atmosphere. till day 3 where enough sunlight comes in to support plant life, and one day later the skys became so clear all the day and night sky could be seen.

JohnClay: "Seven Days that Divide the World," by Dr. John Lennox. I urge you to read this book.

JohnClay said:

@drich0150:
Thanks for that. Also what about birds being created on day 5 but land creatures only being created on day 6?

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fish and birds on day 5:
20 Then God said, “Let the water be filled with many living things, and let there be birds to fly in the air over the earth.” 21 So God created the large sea animals. He created all the many living things in the sea and every kind of bird that flies in the air. And God saw that this was good.

22 God blessed all the living things in the sea and told them to have many babies and fill the seas. And he blessed the birds on land and told them to have many more babies.

23 There was evening, and then there was morning. This was the fifth day.

Here's the thing. Let's say moses wrote Genesis or someone God trusted in or around that time.

So when was moses poking around? 1500 to 2000 years BEFORE Christ. So all of the time between christ and ourselves times 2.

How old are the terms or definition of the words birds fish (their taxonomy) defined?
Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.

But this way of identifying animas is only a few hundred years old. So what is meant when we say bird following the taxonomy of Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species. can't possible be what was meant when the word in genesis 1 was originally used.

So we must turn to the hebrew to see what the actual word is.
עוֹף`owph

loosly it means fowl. or rather in the english the push is to translate fowl but here in the actual defination the word really means any winged creature. which includes insects bats fish or anything else that can possible fly or glide.
עוֹף ʻôwph, ofe; from H5774; a bird (as covered with feathers, or rather as covering with wings), often collectively:—bird, that flieth, flying, fowl.
Genesis 1:1 (KJV)

but as the passage above shows Sea creatures where created first. As even science says life started from the sea so too does the bible say life was first introduced to the sea.

The bible does not say complete life or life that first our understanding of taxonomy first filled the sea.. it is very non specific in that it only says God filled the seas with creatures. starting with what would become large "whales" which is better translated leviathan which again does not fit our taxonomy so someone some where translated the idea of impossibly big godzilla monster and said this must be a whale as this is the biggest we can identify today.

Remember this was observed 4000 years ago, meaning the words and definations abvaible to man 4000 years ago are far less specific than our words today. So when we translate we look to find modern examples of what is being described and we assume...

However the bible does not lock any taxonomy as we understand it down. Only life in the sea started first then from the sea winged creatures (flying fish maybe or something like that) happened first

Then the very next day the seeds for all manner of creepy crawley things are planted then land monsters (behemoth) which it translated cattle..
בְּהֵמָהbĕhemah
bᵉhêmâh, be-hay-maw'; from an unused root (probably meaning to be mute); properly, a dumb beast; especially any large quadruped or animal (often collective):—beast, cattle.

24 Then God said, “Let the earth produce many kinds of living things. Let there be many different kinds of animals. Let there be large animals and small crawling animals of every kind. And let all these animals produce more animals.” And all these things happened.

25 So God made every kind of animal. He made the wild animals, the tame animals, and all the small crawling things. And God saw that this was good.

Then he created what would become evolved man.

Again in the 7 day creation of chapter one nothing in the word says things where in their final form meaning nothing says the items where created in their final Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. What was created could have (like the etymology of the hebrew words) have evolved from a leviathan into a whale.. Or a behemoth into cattle or whatever.

The point is do not get stuck on the names any english bible gives on what was created especially if they identify a specific Kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and/or species. because those words, and that way of identifying biological subjects, was not the way the writer of genesis could have possibly done things.

JohnClay said:

@drich0150:

Hi the scientific classifications of the creatures are irrelevant. The point is it says the flying creatures were created before the land creatures. There is no hint of any land creatures being created before flying creatures.

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Again when God created in genesis 1 nothing in the narrative says these were completed forms. In fact if science is correct these forms are not yet complete. We are in some state of transition still.

Think what was done in the opening days of creation as, what would become, rather than what was completed. Again the only record of anything be made complete was apart in the garden. Everything outside of the Garden could have been in raw prehistoric form. In otherwords God planted the organism that would become fish that would become whales that would be come flying 'fowl' on day 4 it does not say there was a complete catalog of all taxonomic winged creatures having been created on day 4. in fact the narrative reads he created a master model and gave it to them to populate the rest of the world. meaning to evolve to their surroundings and fill in the rest over time.
This master model could have been a microscopic organism with a propensity for flight.

Or it could have just been a few fish or aquatic organisms who could take short flights. like rays or flying fish. again our taxonomy's rules and classifications where not known to the writer of genesis So to say there was no birds is to assume you know what a bird was to him, rather than he saying what you know as a bird was complete on day 4.

JohnClay said:

During my first year of university I wanted to try and find the truth - so I looked at books about the evolution of humans, etc. Then I was contacted by a former creationist from America - Edward T Babinski:
Ed Babinski

He also wrote "Leaving The Fold: Testimonies Of Former Fundamentalists". He told me about the Green River formation - this convinced me that the earth must be at least a few million years old so then YEC can't be true. I already believed that the Gap Theory ("Lucifer's Flood" - I think Benny Hinn believes in that) and the Day-Age theories couldn't be true. I believed that the Bible must be 100% true or otherwise the God of the Bible isn't true - so I became an atheist who believed in a 100% physical reality. As a YEC I had been comforted by the belief in the after life and being able to pray to the creator of the universe so I didn't mind too much of my depressing history of dealing with girls. But when I became an atheist all I had was my earthly life so I became depressed.

Here is an interesting comic about a YEC who also goes directly to atheism after he finds problems in YEC:

Click to expand...

The problem with YEC is it paints itself as the consistent teaching of Christianity from the beginning of the Christian faith. But it's not. YEC teaching is rather new, a neologism, a new doctrine that has hardly a 200 year history. You got sucked into it and for a while it seemed like it was true Christianity. And then when some facts broke in and you discovered the YEC teaching was a house of cards, it crashed your faith. Understandably.

Sounds like you are attempting to reconstruct elements of the faith of your youth outside of the YEC framework. I'm just encouraging you by letting you know it is possible to recover older and more theologically astute teaching on the subject that is not in conflict with good science. Look to how Catholics do it. There is no final conflict between science and faith. We don't have to pretend that God is trying to fool people with fake fossils. I say this as someone who took multiple paleontology classes on the way to my biology degree and post graduate studies in biochemistry. YEC is a new doctrine. It never was that simple. Not until they came along and said it was that simple, and the only way to believe.

JohnClay said:

YEC means "young earth creationist" (who believe the universe is about 6000 years old)

In primary school my science teacher said that he didn't believe in evolution or that we came from monkeys. I also went to a travelling museum about dinosaurs and it had a display that said that some people believe we come from Adam and Eve. When I started high school there was a travelling "Creation Bus" that showed a video saying that legends of dragons were based on sightings of dinosaurs. I bought some books and Creation magazines that made a persuasive case that YEC is true.

Then I moved and started going to a Lutheran high school. Over the years I bought more YEC materials and went to presentations. I started trying to convince staff of the school (librarian, teachers, pastor) that YEC is true but none of them became YECs. Well one science teacher did, about 10+ years later. In year 12 I saw an anti-YEC article in a youth science magazine and I wrote to them a letter that was several pages long about the evidence for YEC. I also wrote them a short letter that was published. At around that time I said to God in my mind "I want to know the truth, no matter how depressing it is". Me talking to God like that is very rare. Then I got a very strong tingling sensation over my body - that's one of the only times that has happened to me.

I also heard about a popular anti-YEC book called "Telling Lies for God" by Ian Plimer. In university I made a web page about it which found dozens of problems in his book. The web page was part of a site I made called "Dirt or Slime" - you can see some of it here:
Wayback Machine

About the title of the site:

During my first year of university I wanted to try and find the truth - so I looked at books about the evolution of humans, etc. Then I was contacted by a former creationist from America - Edward T Babinski:
Ed Babinski

He also wrote "Leaving The Fold: Testimonies Of Former Fundamentalists". He told me about the Green River formation - this convinced me that the earth must be at least a few million years old so then YEC can't be true. I already believed that the Gap Theory ("Lucifer's Flood" - I think Benny Hinn believes in that) and the Day-Age theories couldn't be true. I believed that the Bible must be 100% true or otherwise the God of the Bible isn't true - so I became an atheist who believed in a 100% physical reality. As a YEC I had been comforted by the belief in the after life and being able to pray to the creator of the universe so I didn't mind too much of my depressing history of dealing with girls. But when I became an atheist all I had was my earthly life so I became depressed.

Here is an interesting comic about a YEC who also goes directly to atheism after he finds problems in YEC:

It's here -> Evolution and Creation Science, The Bible Taught It First

Now I believe that there is an intelligent force making itself known to me through coincidences:
Hearing songs with seemingly supernatural significance

I also believe in guided evolution where an intelligent force intervened in small ways from time to time leading there to be a lot of amazing flowers and birds, etc. Perhaps it involves a simulation (like a computer game) with AI intervening from time to time so that things like birds evolve, etc. It is just a hunch though.

I think the best interpretation of Genesis is this:
Framework interpretation (Genesis) - Wikipedia
I don't know of any problems with it. I hadn't heard of it before earlier in my life.

Click to expand...

There are a series of lectures/presentations done by a former university professor who was an athiest and the head of the science department there. He is now a YEC and he outlines many of the issues from a scientific standpoint that caused his switch. Its about 6 lectures starting with the earth in time and space, the universal flood, where mammals reigned, bones in stones, the genes of genes and another one. If this is of interest to you I will give you the link.