How did you decide?

Mick116 said:

I was a committed young-earth creationist until second-year university, mostly because that is the way I was taught the Bible.

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I was a YEC until i began reading this forum - Especially the "all members" "creation vs evolution" section. It was there i learned just how much i dont know about science.

Though I went to Catholic schools through tenth grade, none of my teachers even pretended to believe that the earth was younger than the scientific data says it is. There is no need to interpret the Bible to fit science; it's hard enough just to interpret what the authors were trying to say about God, without worrying about how they thought about the physical universe. The more I learn about the culture they lived in, and how far removed it was from ours, the more convinced I am that it makes no sense to even talk about taking the Biblical creation stories "literally." We just can't do it, since there is no way for us to recapture the cultural context--the mindset of the people who wrote, and first read, Genesis. Since we cannot know that context as they did, we can never have more than a rough idea of what they intended to convey by any verse more complex than "Thou shalt not kill."
More important, any "proof" for the truth of creationism or intelligent design would be proof of God's existence. The existence of such proof would be incompatible with free will: God asks us to believe in Him and come to Him through faith, not through scientific evidence. And it would also be incompatible with the nature of science, which many Christians do not seem to understand. True science does not try to exclude the possibility of the supernatural; it tries to explain natural phenomena by reference to natural laws. It simply does not discuss the supernatural, since such matters necessarily do not involve natural laws. Science has, in fact, proven that it can never explain everything: that is the necessary consequence of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. That means that science can never prove that God had no hand in the universe, no matter how hard some "scientists" might try. I believe that God constantly works in the physical universe, but I know that neither I nor anyone else will ever be able to prove this. I also believe that studying, and accepting, the scientific data can tell us a great deal about how "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform."

"A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol." -Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I firmly believed for a while that if the Bible said the world was made in 6 days then it was - no argument. But now, two things lead me to think this is not so;

a) As an earlier poster said, Genesis 1+2 were not written to be taken literally. William Barclay (theologian) points out that Hebrew people thought in pictures, not in reasoned and scientific arguments. Genesis 1 explains why the world was created, because God wanted it to be; it doesn't actually say how, this was not its purpose. The writer wanted people to know that the world is in God's hands, he made it, he controls it.

b) I believe that if the earth were only a few thousand years old, and rocks etc were created instantly and fully formed, there would be evidence that pointed to this. Scientists would make discoveries that confirmed what the Bible stated years ago. I am not in the least bit scientific, and cannot argue from this perspective. But I have been on the BBC science message boards where people who were qualified and held degrees in science, astronomy, geology etc were absolutely demolishing arguments put forward by creationists and the AoG website. How would this be possible if YE -ism was true? Why would God create the world in a certain number of days, and then allow people to find evidence and make discoveries that stated the opposite?
The answers given by creationists to these questions were usually along the lines of the fossils etc being "planted" as a test to our faith. I do not understand why they think God would do that. Besides, I'm sure there are many scientists who are also Christians.

So my current view is summed up in my profile - God created, I don't know how or how long it took him. If I really need to know, I'm sure I'll be told one day.

Dexx said:

It was there i learned just how much i dont know about science.

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This was me, for college. When I was younger, I never really believed in a young earth, you could possibly call me something of an old earth creationist/TE hybrid. Maybe a day-age person with a little special creation thrown in? I spouted off the usual "no transitional fossils" junk. Then when I took more in-depth science courses in college, I finally realized how little I knew about biology.

I constantly lurk and occasionally post in the "all members" C+E forum for the same reason - I'm always realizing how little I knew, and it's fascinating absorbing all that information.

"How did you decide what to believe?"

A belief is a conclusion. One decides what to conclude by analysing data or experience.

I was born on the evolution side of the fence. Learned about Christianity for 12 years throughout my pre-uni schooling. Genesis was explained to me as a symbolic myth from day one that is how it is up till now.

Creation, because I have read books on why evolution is wrong, and the evidence that is so strong against it. The stuff they teach in textbooks in middle schools and high schools are full of lies on the subject.

The Miller-Urey Experiment:

Miller chose a hydrogen-rich mixture of methane, ammonia, and water vapor, which was consistent with what many scientists thought back then. But scientists don't believe that anymore. As a geophysicist with the Carnegie Institution said in the 1960s, "What is the evidence for a primitive methane-ammonia atmosphere on earth? The answer is there is no evidence for it, but much against it."
And Science magazine said in 1995 that experts now dismiss Miller's experiment because "the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation."
. . .textbooks still present the Miller experiment as though it reflected the earth's early environment, when most geochemists since the 1960s would say it was totally unlike Miller's. . .Some textbooks fudge by saying, well, even if you use a real atmosphere, you still get organic molecules, as if that solves the problem. . .do you know what [organic molecules] are? Formaldehyde! Cyanide!. . .They may be organic molecules, but in my lab at Berkeley you couldn't even have a capped bottle of formaldehyde in the room, because the stuff is so toxic. You open the bottle and it fries proteins all over the place, just from the fumes. It kills embryos. The idea that using a realistic atmosphere gets you the first step in the origin of life is just laughable.
. . .to suggest that formaldehyde and cyanide give you the right substrate for the origin of life. . .well, it's just a joke.
Do you know what you get? [when you add formaldehyde and cyanide] Embalming fluid!

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The Haeckel embryos:

The minor problem is that Haeckel cherry-picked his examples. . .he stacked the deck by picking representatives that came closest to fitting his idea-and then he went further by faking the similarities.
. . .the most dramatic problem is that what Haeckel claimed is the early stage of development is nothing of the sort. It's actually the midpoint of development. . .he deliberately omits the earlier stages altogether.

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Found this article while searching for more information on Humphreys.

Voted. I wanted to comment that the closest-fitting option I chose "I am a creationist and I try to make the Bible account fit with science" sounds like eisegesis. I'm a little more comfortable with "I am a creationist and I try to find science that fits with the Bible account" although that doesn't quite sit with me either.

I was an evolutionist 10 months ago simply because I thought evolution was the way the world worked. (Do you question the air you breathe?) I also dedicated my life to Christ about 12 months ago. I met some creationists that showed me some things wrong with evolution that I haven't seen before. I looked into it some more, read some AiG articles, found some PRATTs, read the evolutionary counters to them...

I eventually realized how much faith is on both sides of the argument, even amongst scientific evolutionists. Faith abounds in statements made by both sides. For the Creationist, it's obvious. For the evolutionist, I see it in things like "eventually we will figure out..." and "we can't know, but it's the best we got" and "given enough time...." Additionally, I see the purely naturalistic theory (by definition science must be completely naturalistic) as flawed, since I see evidence to the supernatural (ghosts, demons, aliens, miracles, spellcasting, and the existance of God).

With faith on both sides, and given God's endorsement of one over the other, I decided to simply trust God. The simplest reading of Genesis is litteral. The litteral reading also fits in with creation/fall/salvation with the fewest theological holes, allows me to trust the entire scripture, and YEC scientifically explains some things evolutionists have trouble explaining. Faith by faith. I chose to trust God, but science was very important in the beginning of my study for me. Now, it's secondary.

Critias said:

Biblical study in the original languages, Early Church Father studies, and Jewish culture study. All lead me to the belief of Genesis being a historical narrative that is historically accurate.

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What he said!

And what buho said! In fact, except for being a Christian for 3 years longer than he, my experience mirrors his own.

I did not respond to the poll because I am a born-again Christian who believes that God created the world as Genesis 1 says and that more and more science is being found that confirms that view. I don't ignore science that does not SEEM to support creation - I just assume that I don't understand how it fits in!

Well, if you want to harp on Miller-Urey and the Haeckel embryos, I can always harp on the Paluxy footprints and the Japanese plesiosaur. (Creationists were still mentioning the Paluxy footprints as evidence less than a month ago here; evolutionists here don't refer to Haeckel's embryos at all and discuss Miller-Urey knowing about formaldehyde and cyanide and how the atmospheric composition has been fixed since.) But let's not go there. Both conventional and creation science make mistakes; what matters is not where they were but where they are.

fragmentsofdreams said:

Both science and Biblical scholarship lead me to reject creationism.

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Amen!