A man wakes up, and turns to his wife, and says, I'm dead!
His wife looks at him like he's nuts, and says, surely you're not dead.
The man says, of course I'm dead, look at me!
The man continues throughout his day, believing he is dead, when finally his wife convinces him to have a psych eval.
He does so, and the doctor looks at him, and trys to convince the man of one thing, only living people bleed.
Corpses do not bleed, and the doctor shows the man all the evidence he can, save cutting the man to show blood.
And the man finally concedes, and says, ok, only living things bleed.
The doctor finally plunges a pin into the man, to draw blood.
Stunned the man looked at it, in deep reflection and finally says... Great scott! I guess dead things bleed too!
No amount of evidence will ever convince the unwilling.
A nice story. But the lesson cuts both/all ways.
We believe what we want to believe. While some will say "Seeing is believing, " the inverse is also true "Believing is seening."
When I was young, and was taught the creationist 6-day account in Genesis, there were a number of important implications, and those who taught me did so from their own perception of God - this perception being partly what they had received from their parents and teachers, and partly what they found attractive to believe. The Bible scholars among them also felt impelled to present a consistent understanding of the nature of God as presented throughout the Bible. (The specific processes by which the Bible came to be, and how different concepts developed through time, was never presented or explained.) From what I can today put together of this, which
may help answer the original question I would say the following:
Literal creationists believe as they do (and I admit there are variations among them) because:
- their view of God includes his omnipotence - he is the almighty and as such possesses infinite energy. As such, Einstein's conclusion that matter and energy are interchangeable does not negate God's ability to say the word and transform some of his energy into matter. In fact it confirms it.
- their view of God, as presented elsewhere in the Bible, is that he is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is immutable. So when Genesis talks of creatures reproducing "each after its kind" this aspect of creation (as they see it) is entirely consistent with God's only unchangeable nature.
- their view of God is that he is creative, in the true sense, being able to produce not only something out of nothing (i.e. materially) but also something that is not
like anything else before. This doesn't jibe well with the idea of chancey natural selection. Nor does it fit well with general ideas of God being in total and minute control and following a preordained plan.
- the idea of God saying the word and the creature appearing, is for them something that supports their conception of his transcendence of normal processes of nature - the miraculous, the stupendous, the awe-inspiring, the (if you will) unbelievable. This enhances, in their minds, his glory as well as his power.
- the idea that on the sixth day, God did something a little differently, taking time to fashion mankind out of clay, and in the second account, fashioning Eve from one of Adam's ribs, is also consistent with other bible verses that place humankind in a very special light with respect to the creation.
"(NIV)Psalm 8: 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
5 You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Most ordinary creationists are not (I would argue) specifically or intentionally believing this because they want to legitimise the rampant rape of the world by human kind, but this aspect of creation
is used by some Christians to behave as it they have a God-given right to treat the rest of the creation anyway they like, or at least not to actively curtail acts that destroy the environment and drive other creatures into extinction. (In fact, given the creationist's reasoning and claims to follow the bible literally, there is an amazing blind spot to the idea that God has made mankind accountable for the care of his earth - that's a different story).
- the story's portrayal of Adam and Eve being the original couple, told to multiply, is also bound up with the 'normal' evangelical Christian view of God's will for the family unit, explicitly consisting of a heterosexual couple, with children.
- the story presents a "proper" hierarchy - God, Man, Woman, other creature. The story of the Fall that follows is basically one in which a creature (the serpent) convinces the woman to eat the fruit, she convinces the man, and together they rebelled against God. The humans think they have taken a place (at the top) that only God had and have usurped his place, while in fact they have made themselves subservient to the creature. They have allowed "the animal" in them to usurp "the spiritual" and turned God's order upside down. (This incidentally, ties in with other parts of the Bible, that insist that until there is willingness within a person's mind to truly open itself to God, there is no way that person will be able to understand God. Believing is the key to seeing!)
- the creationist account of direct detailed creation places God outside and beyond the creation itself. In entrusting humankind with the care of the creation, he also makes a clear distinction between humans and the rest (as above), with several other implications for attitudes towards other religions: there is only one God (a triune God came much later in religion's development); creation is not part of God; nor are each and every species or creature a god in itself; and conversely, God is not like any creature, including humankind, - i.e. God is not a superhuman, he is beyond our capacity to truly and wholly know; nor has God created the universe and all in it and then abandoned it to its own fate - rather he was eminently satisfied with what he did (he saw that it was very good), loved and loves it, and continues to be very interested and active in what happens to it. Many of the early scientists (and many today) pursue(d) their professions because they were very curious to explore the hidden workings of God in natural sciences. When Christians speak of their relationship with God, it is precisely this active participation in world/personal affairs that they are talking about. Their belief (as a basic premiss) gives them a perspective that sees God's working in them and around them, so often and so consistently, that they cannot statistically accept it as coincidence or chance.
Hopefully this will give you some simple reasons why
some creationists hold the beliefs they do. I cannot speak for any or all of them, on this thread or elsewhere, and no doubt some here will object to what I have written. And make clarifications.
For myself, when I read the verse that underpins many Christians' confidence in the inerrancy of the Bible (All Scripture is given by inspiration of God...) I pay careful attention to the rest of the verse,which says what the scriptures are good and profitable for. In the list there is no mention of scientific or historical accuracy, geology, cosmology, biology, archeology or anything in what we call the sciences today. And therefore, I have ceased to see creationism versus any other account of creation as an issue for myself. Instead I focus on the deeper meanings of the text and find it has a lot for me in my daily life.
