You are correct in my presumption that theistic creationists are not creationists
Might wanna reword that.
- if we define creationism as Biblical creation.
"Biblical Creation" says God created everything. He did. "Biblical Creationists" restrict God to having created everything in an instantaneous magicl flash, and insist that there absolutely, positively,
cannot have been any more to it than that. Everything popped into existence looking just as it did yesterday afternoon.
After all, the Bible doesn't say there was more to it than that, so by cracky there wasn't any more to it than that! God
cannot have done anything more that command everything to be. Because BCs have the right and the duty to say what God
can and
cannot do when it comes to creation.
Old Earth Creationionists, on the other hand, believe that God painstakingly
designed the universe in all its unfathomable complexity. He then created it, from the smallest subatomic particle to the most magnificent galaxies, and set it all in motion to form the universe of which we know and understand so little.
OECs reach the conclusion that God created the universe over unimaginable (for us) periods of time that are insignificant from the eternal perspective of Almighty God. Even from our limited terrestrial perspectives we can see the unmistakable evidence of the the passage of thousands, millions of years in the forming of our small planet; never mind the seemingly infinite reaches of intergalactic space. Our overwhelmed understand wonders how such things can be, And our Lord provides us the answer: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
There are a number of distinctions between the two.
Just so. One posits a Creation that can be described in a couple of paragraphs in a writing designed to be understood by those who couldn't conceive a world larger than the river valley where they lived. The other posits an almost infinite universe created by the Infinite and Almighty God. Yep, the difference is pretty obvious.
We OECs believe that God's power and authority are limitless, and He can, and will, use any method to acheive His purposes that seem good to Him. In contrast, BCs believe that God's ability to create is restricted to those that can be "explained" in three paragraphs in a book that was intended as a concise overview of what God has done, and not a detailed technical tome.
I recognize that theistic creationists give God credit for creating the universe and life, but they diverge from the Bible by adopting Darwinian evolutionary processes on how it was done.
Darwin made observations about God's actual creation, the Bible doesn't provide any details of the Creation at all, other than the broadest of timelines.
First of all, they're trying to combine two opposing principles,
Yep. One is that the Concise Overview (First God Did A, Then God Did C,,,), that provides no detailed information at all, vs the detailed study of God's Creation itself, to discover,
in detail, what God has done, the processes He used to do it, and the design principles He created and implemented to make it all happen.
with creationism being an orderly, designed, purposeful supernatural process
Which involved God saying "Everything, BE!" Fair enough as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far, does it?
versus evolution being a disorderly, undesigned, purposeless natural process.
Yeah, and there's where the BC position comes apart like a $2 watch. Y'all appear to be;lieve that Creation was either a wave of the hand by the Master Magician, or simply an accident that happened when God's attention was elsewhere,. The former at least gives God credit for having some thought as to how everything shoud work, while the latter is simply mindless rubbish the intent of which is to malign those who reject the former. Neither betrays any evidence of rational examination at all, it's all purely partisan religious whoop-whoop, with no thought to being anything else.
To claim belief in both is clearly not the same as believing in just the one.
I'd agree. To declare that God
cannot have designed the universe as it exists, and that all the knowledge obtainable as to the working of God's Creation is contained in the scant few pages of Genesis dedicated to describing it is the worst kind of claptrap, and unworthy of any thoughful Christian.
To be more specific, it's not possible for life to evolve by chance
Which precisely no OEC believes that it did. Anyone who says that we do is either worfully ignorant or knowingly lying. Pick one.
mutations while also evolving by God's design and purpose.
Good, removing the contention that no reasonable Christian believes (the "it's all just random chance") leaves you with evolution by God's design and purpose. Thank you for granting that.
By definition, they're opposing processes.
Yep. the Fiction that dishonest BCs try to attribute to OECs, and the Truth.
Second of all, they adopt the long age, billions of years evolutionary model which rejects the clear reading of Genesis.
Yep, the All There Is To Know About theCreation of the Universe in Three Pages notion. Little bitty universe you have there, innit mate? But God was restricted by how much space there was in Genesis, right?
Of course, they defend this by allegorizing or completely dismissing the text
Not all. It says God created the Heavens and the Earth. He did. He also invented the Laws by which the universe operates, upon which Genesis is strangely silent. It's almost as though Genesis
isn't the Ultimate Source of Information on the Universe, and
maybe wasn't really meant to be!
, but there's no equating this belief system with a Biblical creation belief. The two are hugely different in time frames.
Yep. One Maybe because the writer of Genesis wasn't writing a technical compendium as you'd have us believe, but was writing about... God. Wow, imagine that!
Third of all, they adopt the evolutionary order of creation events which differs from the Genesis account.
Well, there went my idea that evenings and mornings had some vague relation to the rising and setting of the sun. Silly old engineer!
There's no reconciling this other than dismissing the text
Or inventing an interim "sun", as your lot is compelled to do to "explain" those first three "days".
, again differentiating between the two belief systems.
At lease one sun is sufficient for the OECs.
I'm not going to defend Biblical creation here any further than what was said before
Not much there to defend, You have to maintain limits on what God is allowed to do to keep your doctrine intact, and all the seemnigly endless evidece to the contrary.
, but I'll maintain that anyone who thinks theistic evolution is the same as Biblical creation is either ignorant of the contradictory processes or simply accepting an irrational belief system.
I'd simplifying by saying that BCs believe in a Creation that simply ignores the unimaginable majesty of God's actual Creation and replaces it with a small, petty, abbrevated version that they can fit into the limits that their three page universe.
They think they're reconciling two opposing belief systems between God and science but end up satisfying neither.
Nah, we're just rejecting the one that doesn't correspond to the magnificence of Almight God and the grandeur of His actual Creation.
Sadly though, they join the unbelievers in undermining the Bible.
Nope, just BC impoverished view of it.
I don't want or mean to insult or offend anyone here, but feel compelled to defend the Bible
With friends like your lot, the Bible needs no enemies. To try and persuade intelligent people that the few verses on the Creation in Genesis says all there is to know about the working of God's universe makes it sound closer to the ravings of an L. Ron Hubbard than the revelation of God Himself, and a book worthy of only the credulous and ignorant.
, especially the Genesis acount which is the underlying foundation of the Christian faith.
The Gospel of Christ is ths foundation of the Christian Faith. I think that fact is what ultimately separates us. We have, in effect, two different religions.
