Is creationism and Christianity dying in the US?

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Euler

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Yes this gets old. This whole "science proves nothing" crap. Science proves that the speed of light is slowing down.

Wrong. Very wrong. 'Variable Speed of Light' is an hypothesis that has existed since Einstein's early work, but has never gained strong support, due to, you guessed it, a lack of supporting evidence! Quantum field theory postulates that photons may travel at differing speeds, for very short distances, but this is a mile away from what you are claiming.

Science does NOT deal in 'proof'.

Science proves that the earth has a certain mass,

No, Mathematics does that - and its an estimate.

that gravity is determined by the mass of any object, that you can separate liquids by fractional distillation, that you can make an atomic bomb based on E=MC 2.

All of those are scientific THEORIES, open to further review and revision. The gravitational theory that you reference, for example, is based on Newton's work. It was found by Einstein to be incomplete. We added to it with quantum theory.

That's what science does. It replaces, or adds to, old knowledge with new. It NEVER proves anything outright.

Science proves a lot of things.

Name one. You've failed miserably so far.

Evolutionists say it proves nothing because it disproves evolution.

Evolutionary theory is the most strongly supported in all of scientific enquiry.

You cannot prove evolution, I cannot prove that there is a God. Not by science. Therefore both are therories.

Only one is a SCIENTIFIC theory. Only one is backed by (literally) tons of EVIDENCE. Only one is capable of falsification. The other is a wish based upon the mythical writings of superstitious ancients.

Thing is, EGG HEADs incorporated

Ah, some good old discrimination against those who have dedicated their lives to increasing the knowledge of mankind - what a surprise!
 
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Euler

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"There is no science behind"

Correct. There is no recorded evidence of snakes or donkeys being able to talk, of axe heads floating in water, or of people rising from their graves.

If you have some, present it. Or stop looking so foolish.

But, you just said science proves nothing.

Again correct. There's hope left for you yet.

Science provides the best available explanation for the things we see.

So, "there is no science" behind an single glimmer of life "evolving" into all the wonderous forms of life we have now.

Oh dear, all hope is dashed!

Please don't try to play smart word games - you're not very good at it.

Or, are you saying evolution is the only thing that there is "science behind"?

You cannot have it both ways.

Not very good at all.
 
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Euler

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The truth of Christ has survived for more than 2000 years.

No, the myth of Christ has survived for that long. As have the myths surrounding Allah, Vishna, Thor, Zeus, Isis, etc, etc. NONE of them are supported by a scintilla of evidence.


This well grounded theory was questioned by Darwin himself. He didn't see the fossil data base showing what he neede to see and this has not changed.

Yes, he was sceptical of his own theory, which is the attitude that ALL good scientists have - it is only the arrogance of the religious that claims absolute truths!

Fortunately, many of the doubts that Darwin had about his theory have been subsequently erased by the production of that thing that you people hate - EVIDENCE!

Since then, the knowledge that science has provided us with, makes it more and more impossible for all this wonderous world to have started out of the blue. Darwin had no idea how complex even the simplest cell was.
The theory steadily loses ground from there.

Quite the reverse. Modern cell theory and the study of genetics have yielded some of the strongest supporting evidence for the theory.

This slam dunk you speak of maybe a goal, but not in basketball but in hockey where using your hand to score is against the rules. There has been so much falsifiaction of evidence, which started at the beginning of this whole deal, that I cannot ever know what is truth, what is fabricated, what we have not been shown, what has been altered, what has been destroyed.

Rubbish. It is the open nature of scientific enquiry that, firstly, uncovered those few frauds that you mention and, secondly, that permits ANYONE to examine the data accumulated thus far, in order to challenge it.

So knock yourself out - actually do some real work by rolling up your sleeves and painstakingly accumulate the evidence that would overturn the theory - like the real scientists do! There's fame, fortune and a Nobel Prize awaiting you!

It is not a slam dunk. It is a lie spawned by satan himself to lead humans away from the truth of the Bible and the gospel. Remember, satan is the greatest deciever and those who believe they are so intelligent ane wise are the ones who will be called fools.

Another un-evidenced myth.
 
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Euler

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Yes, yes. the catholic church. The LARGEST section of Christianity.



So, now, due to this largest group of believers, I should believe it when "they" state something to be true.

No, I mentioned them because you seemed to indicate that evolutionary theory was "rocking the church".

Not the Catholics it isn't.
 
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justlookinla

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The version of evolution accepted by most members of the Catholic Church is identical in its mechanics to the kind of evolution that I accept. Some Catholics believe the genetically impossible idea that an evolved but still literal Adam and Eve were the progenitors of the entire human race, but most who are less conservative (which would include the majority of Catholics in western Europe, the U.S., and Canada) don't. Atheism is not inherent in the theory of natural selection anymore than it is inherent in the theory that cumulonimbus clouds form as a result of warm air rising.

Actually, it's not about the issue of natural selection. Natural selection does not create new life forms, only random/chance, mindless, meaningless, purposeless and goalless mutations created all life we observe today, including humanity, from an alleged single life form of long long ago according to atheistic Darwinist creationism. No Roman Catholic, who embraces Roman Catholic creationist view, will also embrace the atheistic Darwinist creationist view.
 
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EternalDragon

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So we're all Pharisees and Sadducees because...?


-CryptoLutheran

I am not directing anything at you. The Catholic religion though
has a lot of practices and beliefs that are not biblical but traditional.
There are a few that even go against biblical teaching.

The Pharisees and Sadducees did the same thing.

Who were the Sadducees and the Pharisees?
 
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AV1611VET

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Ask yourself why something that is so real and so true requires faith to believe it.
Because that's the way God set it up for this dispensation.

We get a kind of blessing for that, that even Christ's disciples won't get.

John 20:29 Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
 
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D

DerelictJunction

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The people that Jesus is talking about here knew.
You have evidence to support this conjecture?

I went away from the church, backslid, questioned etc when I was younger. All the time, however, I knew that I was on the wrong road. The deep still voice in my head was never silent. I knew that if I didn't start living a better more "Jesus like" life that my life was going to get tougher. As they say, choose to sin choose to suffer.

You see, there are many people with Christian masks on. They walk the walk and talk the talk but in reality, they are only a store front. No body who knows the savior could ever turn and walk and talk against the Bible and the gospel. When it is real, you attitude changes, your heart is open and you see things differently.
Since you came back to Christ, you have never treated other people badly or in a way that you would not like to be treated? If so, then by your own words you don't know the savior.

When you read the Bible, do you want to here more, read more, understand more? When you here someone speaking against anything Christ said, does it aggrivate you and inspire you to correct them or speak in opposition.
Isn't it the same as the desire of Muslims to correct those who speak against Muhammad? If not, how is it different? If so, is that desire evidence in support of the truth of their beliefs?

When you hear what the ACLU is doing, does it make you concerned for your country.
Like when the ACLU does this? or this?

The older I get and the more I spend time with Christ the more sure I am of our relationship. I strongly believe that if you have a relationship with Christ, you will have no doubts.

If you don't fear Him, I'd be worried.

If you have a relationship with Christ you will know. This relatioship is NOT a religion, it is a relationship.
Muslims who spend more time in prayer also believe they have a relationship with Allah. Do they KNOW they are correct as much as you KNOW you are correct? If not, please explain the difference?
 
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Standing_Ultraviolet

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Natural selection does not create new life forms, only random/chance, mindless, meaningless, purposeless and goalless mutations created all life we observe today, including humanity, from an alleged single life form of long long ago according to atheistic Darwinist creationism. No Roman Catholic, who embraces Roman Catholic creationist view, will also embrace the atheistic Darwinist creationist view.

I'm kind of confused by the distinction that you're making here.

Evolution, in Charles Darwin's view, isn't necessarily meaningless or purposeless. For Darwin (who leaned toward deism at times in his life and toward agnosticism at others), evolution was just a natural process that resulted in new species forming gradually from older ones.

Questions of meaning and purpose are philosophical rather than scientific. We can honestly say that evolution is a natural process that doesn't itself think or have goals without making a philosophical assertion. Most Catholics would agree with that, in the same way that they would agree that a thunderstorm isn't thinking and doesn't have a goal. They might believe that it is directed by God to rain on a particular area through other natural mechanisms, though, while I would disagree with them. The same holds true for evolution. There's no scientific difference between the theory of evolution that Richard Dawkins accepts and the theory that de Chardin accepted, except for the obvious advances in scientific understanding since the 1950s, even though one is an atheist polemicist and one was a Catholic priest.
 
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Papias

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Originally Posted by Standing_Ultraviolet
The version of evolution accepted by most members of the Catholic Church is identical in its mechanics to the kind of evolution that I accept. Some Catholics believe the genetically impossible idea that an evolved but still literal Adam and Eve were the progenitors of the entire human race,

Some clarification is in order.

Let's use an example. Consider any normal person from a long time ago, say, Pharaoh Ramesses II. He ruled around 1260 BC. He had a wife (Nefertari), and kids. Kids will have kids, and since all their descendants will be descended from Ramesses, the number will grow (you can also see this by the fact that Thomas Jefferson already had thousands of descendants after just 200 years, or the fact that there are today many millions of people descended from the few dozen on the Mayflower).

So by 1000 BC Ramesses will have thousands of descendants, and simple math shows that by 800 BC his descendants will surpass the population of Egypt at the time. Of course, many of those will be double or triple descendants, but the upshot is that by then most people in Egypt then will be his descendant. Some of those people will live near the borders, or will have migrated over those centuries, so will be in neighboring countries (Assyria, Babylon, etc.) They too will have kids, and the same spread will happen, so by 600 BC a good chunk of the populations in those areas will be descended from them, and by 400 BC, most will be. The same goes for Asia Minor (Turkey), Greece and Italy by around 400 AD, and into Europe by 600 AD.

Continuing on, most of Southern Europe would be descended from Ramesses by 1000 AD (along with some of Northern Europe) and then most of Northern Europe by 1400 AD, and practically all by 1800 AD. Notice that you can do the same thing with most anyone from Ramesses time who had at least a few kids. You could also start in, say, Sweden and work south, or whatever, and still get a similar result.

So, being of mostly French and German Ancestry, I'm descended from Ramesses, as you likely are (unless you are not European, Middle Eastern or North African).

All that happened without there ever being a population bottleneck. Ramesses & Nefertari were never the only ones on earth, yet, withing a few millenia, everyone on earth will be descended from them. We agree that Ramesses and Nefertari, like all humans, evolved from earlier apes.

Now, imagine a population of hominids in Africa. At some point, say, a million years ago, designate two as "Adam & Eve". From a Catholic standpoint, God gives these two the first souls - they are the first "full humans", even though they are very similar in most respects to everyone else at the time, and so their children can interbreed with the others. All their descendants also receive souls, and hence are also "fully human".

Now the same thing we saw with Ramesses happens, and within a few thousands years (say, by 960,000 years ago) everyone on earth is descended from them, and is fully human, and there never was a population bottleneck.

You many not agree with the idea of a soul. Regardless, do you see how this works, being completely consistent in every material way with the evolutionary history a atheist would describe, if the soul is ignored?

In Christ-

Papias
 
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Standing_Ultraviolet

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Now, imagine a population of hominids in Africa. At some point, say, a million years ago, designate two as "Adam & Eve". From a Catholic standpoint, God gives these two the first souls - they are the first "full humans", even though they are very similar in most respects to everyone else at the time, and so their children can interbreed with the others. All their descendants also receive souls, and hence are also "fully human".

Now the same thing we saw with Ramesses happens, and within a few thousands years (say, by 960,000 years ago) everyone on earth is descended from them, and is fully human, and there never was a population bottleneck.

You many not agree with the idea of a soul. Regardless, do you see how this works, being completely consistent in every material way with the evolutionary history a atheist would describe, if the soul is ignored?

In Christ-

Papias

Thank you, Papias, for your contribution to the thread. This is definitely a better explanation than any that I could give regarding the position of most members of the Catholic Church on evolution, because of, well, the obvious. It's also, to at least some extent, demonstrably true (there were individuals who are ancestors of every living human being, although the two that we know of didn't live at the same time).

I don't know how well it comports with the position of many of the more conservative theologians in the Church who may not understand evolution all that well and who often see no problem, as a result, with the idea of a population bottleneck. The much stricter interpretation that some of them hold regarding Adam and Eve was what I was referring to as genetically impossible. That said, I'm hardly the person to critique any position on theology.
 
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RedPonyDriver

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Can anyone tell me if one's stand on this issue has any bearing on salvation? If one understands the idea of creation myths and accepts Genesis 1-2 as a myth (which has no bearing on salvation) or accepts it as scientific truth (which I think is impossible), does that have any bearing on one's belief in Christ?
 
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keith99

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Originally Posted by Standing_Ultraviolet


Some clarification is in order.

Let's use an example. Consider any normal person from a long time ago, say, Pharaoh Ramesses II. He ruled around 1260 BC. He had a wife (Nefertari), and kids. Kids will have kids, and since all their descendants will be descended from Ramesses, the number will grow (you can also see this by the fact that Thomas Jefferson already had thousands of descendants after just 200 years, or the fact that there are today many millions of people descended from the few dozen on the Mayflower).

So by 1000 BC Ramesses will have thousands of descendants, and simple math shows that by 800 BC his descendants will surpass the population of Egypt at the time. Of course, many of those will be double or triple descendants, but the upshot is that by then most people in Egypt then will be his descendant. Some of those people will live near the borders, or will have migrated over those centuries, so will be in neighboring countries (Assyria, Babylon, etc.) They too will have kids, and the same spread will happen, so by 600 BC a good chunk of the populations in those areas will be descended from them, and by 400 BC, most will be. The same goes for Asia Minor (Turkey), Greece and Italy by around 400 AD, and into Europe by 600 AD.

Continuing on, most of Southern Europe would be descended from Ramesses by 1000 AD (along with some of Northern Europe) and then most of Northern Europe by 1400 AD, and practically all by 1800 AD. Notice that you can do the same thing with most anyone from Ramesses time who had at least a few kids. You could also start in, say, Sweden and work south, or whatever, and still get a similar result.

So, being of mostly French and German Ancestry, I'm descended from Ramesses, as you likely are (unless you are not European, Middle Eastern or North African).

All that happened without there ever being a population bottleneck. Ramesses & Nefertari were never the only ones on earth, yet, withing a few millenia, everyone on earth will be descended from them. We agree that Ramesses and Nefertari, like all humans, evolved from earlier apes.

Now, imagine a population of hominids in Africa. At some point, say, a million years ago, designate two as "Adam & Eve". From a Catholic standpoint, God gives these two the first souls - they are the first "full humans", even though they are very similar in most respects to everyone else at the time, and so their children can interbreed with the others. All their descendants also receive souls, and hence are also "fully human".

Now the same thing we saw with Ramesses happens, and within a few thousands years (say, by 960,000 years ago) everyone on earth is descended from them, and is fully human, and there never was a population bottleneck.

You many not agree with the idea of a soul. Regardless, do you see how this works, being completely consistent in every material way with the evolutionary history a atheist would describe, if the soul is ignored?

In Christ-

Papias

I have a vague memory from decades ago regarding reading somewhere (perhaps C.S. Lewis) that there are 2 different words used for 'life' in the Genesis account and what you have pointed out fits perfectly with that point.
 
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bhsmte

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Can anyone tell me if one's stand on this issue has any bearing on salvation? If one understands the idea of creation myths and accepts Genesis 1-2 as a myth (which has no bearing on salvation) or accepts it as scientific truth (which I think is impossible), does that have any bearing on one's belief in Christ?

Clearly, it depends on who you ask.

Since the majority of Christians agree with evolution, that should tell you something about what they think on this topic.
 
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AV1611VET

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Is that what they told you? Why on earth would you be SO gullible as to believe that? Why would you even want to believe it?

So I won't end up like you.

How will he end up?

Like you?

And what would that be like with details please?
Well, I guess I would end up going from BAPTIST to FAITH: OTHER, while Fancy would go from FAITH: OTHER to ATHEIST.
 
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