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how can anyone believe in creationism

Wiccan_Child

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Genesis tells us that the creation took place in six 24 hour days.
That it does. However, this tells us nothing about the when: did these six days occur within a week 6000 years ago, or over several billion years,starting several billion years ago?
 
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keith99

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Genesis tells us that the creation took place in six 24 hour days.

Only if you read it in a translation to a modern language and fail to go back and check what the words meant in the original. There the words have a much more general meaning. Morning and evening could just as well mean beginning and ending.

But even in English one can see the footprints if one looks. What is morning in common usage? How about sunrise, and evening sunset. Yet when is the sun created? Oops can't be morning and evening in htat sense.

Now as to how they get the 6000 year figure. They piece it togeather from the geneologies. This is both brilliant and foolish. One first has to realize that there is the same kind of problem with "Son" and "Father". Those terms are not always literal. In the original language the same term can mean ancesor and decendent. And of course in Scriptuer they can even be used figuratively. For are there not verses that describe some men as having Satan as their father? Those to all but the most exteme literalists are metephrical useages, claiming their spiritual father is Satan, not their biological father.
 
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keith99

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Mainly they do it by ignoring the math, just as you have done. (Hmm same thing both sides of the argument). Others have tried to show the math, but seems people don't get it. Turns out 6000 years is plenty of time. Look up the Wiki article or any other historical accounting. There simply were not very many humans 10,000 years ago. we pretty much did go from a few 1000 to today in 10,000 years or less. So doing it in 6000 is hardly a problem.

Now trying to explain the Grand Canyon is a much bigger problem. You have layers 1000s of feet thick. Even assuming that those were all in place when the Earth was created how can the Colorado river have cut so much away? And after that did God creater the world with all those layers that look like they were deposited? If so it raises some very nasty questions. Did God create or allow to be created features that would lead someone looking in good faith to think the world was older than it really is and then hold that good faith reasoning against them? If so what kind of God is that? Just fair and loving?

And of course if we fall back on God created it that way then one can claim the world is just one day old, God created it all including our memories just 24 hours ago.
 
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ClearSky

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We have indeed a problem to explain why God lets the earth and universe look old to an observer. But this problem goes away when we abandon some of our presuppositions about God.

The Bible does not tell explicitly that God is fair and loving. When you read the stories, you'll notice that He changed over time. In the beginning there is no indication whatsoever that He loved humans. Later, there are hints that he loved some, but certainly not all mankind. Only the sacrifice of His son indicated that He loved all mankind at that time.

So, God could have pre-aged the world for hiding the fact that it was created, and thus giving us the free choice to believe in creation or not. That's not entirely fair, but who says God must be always fair?

Or the age of the world was required for the creation process for technical reasons. Then God was not omnipotent, but who says God has to be 100% omnipotent? He was able to create the world, and that should be enough.

And of course if we fall back on God created it that way then one can claim the world is just one day old, God created it all including our memories just 24 hours ago.
This would be possible, but would not make sense.

What makes sense is the assumption that God created the world in the most economical way. Creating it in its current state 24 hours ago is certainly not economical. Creating a Big Bang and waiting 13.7 billion years is also not economical. The most economical way is creating the world at the time when human civilization started - which was about 4000 BC.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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This is a novel answer, and I applaud you for it. However, there is one theological quandry: it requires that God is himself imperfect. This is a big hoo-ha for some people, so your answer may find little support.
 
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Bobfr

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This is a novel answer, and I applaud you for it. However, there is one theological quandry: it requires that God is himself imperfect. This is a big hoo-ha for some people, so your answer may find little support.
Why does it require God being impefect ? Don't see why.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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Why does it require God being impefect ? Don't see why.
Because a perfect thing can't change, or else it wouldn't be perfect anymore. That ClearSky posits a changing God implies that her God isn't perfect.
 
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Athrond

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Economic? from the perspective of an omnipotent creator? You are just pulling this right out of nothing. Atleast scientist put evidence behind their claim...

Trond
 
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Bobfr

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That's the problem with religious people : they all state that human race is the ultimate creation of (their) God. A bit too egocentric for atheists.
Note that Homo Sapiens has existed since 200 000 years. Your date 4000 BC seems to refer to the beginning of history, with the discover of writing.
 
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Alas, this is the only argument Theistic people have to offer.
Remember, they change the name of creationism, to intelligent design, and try and call it science.
You cannot effectively deduce scientific evidence from a book written thousands of years ago, and try and call it fact.
That would be like using some science fiction novel to accurately state geological facts, on our own planet.
The only scientific fact about the bible is, that it was written.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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Alas, this is the only argument Theistic people have to offer.
Remember, they change the name of creationism, to intelligent design, and try and call it science.
With all due respect, it is not theistic evolutionists who are doing this. Creationists are what we call the ones who reject the theory of common descent. Strictly speaking, they're YEC. OEC and the like are the theistic evolutionists, and I do not believe they promote ID for the simply reason that they believe in common descent, which the IDists don't.

You cannot effectively deduce scientific evidence from a book written thousands of years ago, and try and call it fact.
That would be like using some science fiction novel to accurately state geological facts, on our own planet.
Like Scientology

The only scientific fact about the bible is, that it was written.
That is a brilliant phrase. If I had room in my sig, it'd be going there. In fact...

Also, reps and buddy
 
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Like Scientology
This is the only thing more laughable than the idea of creationism.

But anyways, what I am getting at, is with more and more people waking up every year, creationists are an endangered species, which is why they have gotten desperate enough to try and force it into our public school curriculum, rather than keeping it in the appropriate learning facilities.
They have received so much pressure from the scientific community, that they are also trying to infiltrate that area as well.
However, this scientific "evidence" that they seem to come up with, is also mostly hilarious.
Like the peanut butter theory.
Thats just... wow.
You dont see Stephen Hawkings explaining his Big Bang theory by tossing a bowl of lime jello at his audience.
 
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ClearSky

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Economic? from the perspective of an omnipotent creator? You are just pulling this right out of nothing. Atleast scientist put evidence behind their claim...
If you have a look at the field of science, maybe you notice that there is a science named "math". Mathematicans also pull their science "right out of nothing". They begin with axioms, and conclude theorems from them. No evidence required.

Think of creationism as a sort of mathematics. We also have axioms and conclude theorems. The axiom is that God exists, and thinks more or less like a human, although he's probably more intelligent. The conclusion is that He didn't create the world and then waited 13.7 billion years. He rather created it so that He could start whatever His plans were right away. And that was likely the begin of human expansion and civilization several thousand years ago. Hope this explanation helps understanding Creationism.

With all due respect, our OEC brothers don't believe in theistic evolution either. They believe that God created the world, then waited some billion years, then created animals and man before evolution could save him the work.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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If you have a look at the field of science, maybe you notice that there is a science named "math". Mathematicans also pull their science "right out of nothing". They begin with axioms, and conclude theorems from them. No evidence required.
Mathematics is simply the logic of numbers. Since the 'axioms' of logic are self-evident (albiet unprovable; see Gödel's incompleteness theorem), so too are the axioms of mathematics.
Of course, the 'axioms' of mathematics are simply definitions and "If..., then..." statements.

With all due respect, our OEC brothers don't believe in theistic evolution either. They believe that God created the world, then waited some billion years, then created animals and man before evolution could save him the work.
I'm not exactly up to scratch with OEC, so I'll take your word for this. But I thought that the OEC believes that essentially the same as the average scientist (12-13 billion year old universe, 4.5 billion year old Earth, 3.5 billion years of evolution, etc), with the added feature that God influenced events slightly to ensure the evolution of humanity.
I didn't think they believed in the ex nihilo creation of terrestrial life.
 
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Wilderbees

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You cannot disprove evolution. Evolution does not say that man evolved from apes or monkeys. Evolution is the change of genetic traits from one population to the next and through a process of natural selection the more desirable traits needed to survive throughout the population are selected. You cannot disprove this, you cannot bend, twist, mend, or mold this.

Creationism is a belief that the Earth, the world, the Universe was created by a deity or a supernatural being. The major creationist beliefs have books of their faith. Words can be interpreted, changed, twisted, and mended in several ways. Any book of faith is so ambiguous that there is no truth found in it at all.

Evolution is questions that have answers.
Creationism is answers that cannot be questioned.

These faiths were created for the sole purpose of giving humans the belief that they matter or have value in this universe.
 
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Naraoia

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Evolution is questions that have answers.
Eh, not really. If we had answers to all the questions of evolution there wouldn't be the amount of evolution research there is.

If you only want to say that evolution as defined by biologists is an undisputable fact, I agree. But you seem to think it's unfalsifiable and/or a form of faith.

Evolution is the very thing that robs humans of their special place on earth (heliocentricism and other assorted astronomical theories having done away with our special place in the universe). It only gives comfort if you equate it with some kind of progress that inevitably leads to us, which you probably only do if you already believe that humans are special.
 
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Wiccan_Child

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I think he means that evolution poses questions that can potentially be answered. Religion, by contrast and in a very real sense, posits answers that cannot be questioned.

To put it romantically, evolution answers biology (or rather, explains why biology is the way it is).
But biology isn't everything, nor do we fully understand biology itself (for instance, just what does cause homosexuality?).

I dunno. [/rant]
 
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