My experience...Ken Ham and YEC.

[ChetSinger]

The thing that disturbs me most about YEC is YE part of it. And it is not about believing the earth may only be 6 k - 10 k. It's the out right lying they perform to justify that belief. In other words, for the wrong reasons. There are literally scores or ways to show the earth is older than that.

There are also scores of reasons why people can't come back from the dead. But Jesus did, and so, we hope, will we. The creation, however it happened, had a supernatural cause: the will of God. Our religion is a supernatural one, filled with creation, prophecy, miracles, angels, etc. Every time you pray you are engaging in a supernatural act that science says is fruitless.

 

[RickG]

There are also scores of reasons why people can't come back from the dead. But Jesus did, and so, we hope, will we. The creation, however it happened, had a supernatural cause: the will of God. Our religion is a supernatural one, filled with creation, prophecy, miracles, angels, etc. Every time you pray you are engaging in a supernatural act that science says is fruitless.

What has any of that have to do with what you quoted me saying?

 

[Split Rock]

There are also scores of reasons why people can't come back from the dead. But Jesus did, and so, we hope, will we. The creation, however it happened, had a supernatural cause: the will of God. Our religion is a supernatural one, filled with creation, prophecy, miracles, angels, etc. Every time you pray you are engaging in a supernatural act that science says is fruitless.

So it was a miracle that God made the earth look much, much older than it really is??

 

[Loudmouth]

There are also scores of reasons why people can't come back from the dead. But Jesus did, and so, we hope, will we.

Jesus' resurrection didn't leave any empirical evidence that we can test in the modern age. We do have evidence in the modern age of how the Earth formed and how life changed. The two can't be compared.

The creation, however it happened, had a supernatural cause: the will of God. Our religion is a supernatural one, filled with creation, prophecy, miracles, angels, etc. Every time you pray you are engaging in a supernatural act that science says is fruitless.

The Bible describes God knitting a baby together in the mother's womb. We have very natural explanations for how embryos develop, and those explanations are backed by mountains of evidence.

Either the Bible is falsified by the scientific field of embryonic development, or God can act through nature. Your pick. The age of the Earth and evolution are hardly the only problem areas for a literal Bible.

Psalm 139:

12Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. 13For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother's womb. 14I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well.…

 

[ChetSinger]

What has any of that have to do with what you quoted me saying?

Only that our religion flies in the face of convention at many turns.

 

[Loudmouth]

Only that our religion flies in the face of convention at many turns.

Belief in the resurrection requires faith, but it does not require rejection of facts. YEC does require the rejection of facts. That's the difference. YEC requires God to create a fake history in the fields of astronomy, geology, and biology.

 

[TLK Valentine]

That was not what I was referring to.

Then what?

 

[bhsmte]

Only that our religion flies in the face of convention at many turns.

I think what you really mean is, certain religious beliefs require one to reject evidence against the belief.

YEC, would certainly be the poster child for rejecting objective evidence, to hold onto a faith belief.

 

[ChetSinger]

I think what you really mean is, certain religious beliefs require one to reject evidence against the belief.

YEC, would certainly be the poster child for rejecting objective evidence, to hold onto a faith belief.

Actually, the linchpin of Christianity is the resurrection of Christ. Christians have many different origins beliefs (YEC, OEC, TE, etc.), but faith in the physical resurrection of Christ is what makes us, well, Christians:

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. - Romans 10

And again, here:

For if the dead are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless; you are still in your sins.

Furthermore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished.

For if only in this life we have hope in Christ, we should be pitied more than anyone.

But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also came through a man.

For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. - 1 Corinthians 15

In Christianity, the resurrection of Christ is the most important event in mankind's history: it healed the breach between God and Man.

This was a bit of a diversion, but there is plenty of observational evidence against belief in the resurrection: we don't see people rising from the dead.

 

[Loudmouth]

This was a bit of a diversion, but there is plenty of observational evidence against belief in the resurrection: we don't see people rising from the dead.

We don't have evidence from the supposed resurrection, so we can't say one way or another. However, we do have evidence from Earth's past that tells us how old it is, how life evolved, etc. That's the difference.

 

[bhsmte]

Actually, the linchpin of Christianity is the resurrection of Christ. Christians have many different origins beliefs (YEC, OEC, TE, etc.), but faith in the physical resurrection of Christ is what makes us, well, Christians:



And again, here:


In Christianity, the resurrection of Christ is the most important event in mankind's history: it healed the breach between God and Man.

This was a bit of a diversion, but there is plenty of observational evidence against belief in the resurrection: we don't see people rising from the dead.

I agree the resurrection is the key to Christian belief.

I also agree that there is no objective verifiable evidence the resurrection took place and is why, NT historians don't see the event as historically credible, from a historical method standpoint.

So, one must believe it on faith.

 

[ChetSinger]

I agree the resurrection is the key to Christian belief.

I also agree that there is no objective verifiable evidence the resurrection took place and is why, NT historians don't see the event as historically credible, from a historical method standpoint.

So, one must believe it on faith.

Actually, I think the primary reason people reject the resurrection is scientific, not historical. I think if we occasionally saw people rising from the dead after three days we'd have no problem believing that the Jesus of the NT had also done so. Imo, anyway.

 

[TLK Valentine]

I agree the resurrection is the key to Christian belief.

I also agree that there is no objective verifiable evidence the resurrection took place and is why, NT historians don't see the event as historically credible, from a historical method standpoint.

So, one must believe it on faith.

Even though there is more than enough textual evidence to indicate that the Crucifixion/Resurrection accounts bite their own tails more times than an objective reader could be comfortable with, that evidence is circumstantial -- and off topic.

The evidence for the age of the Earth, however, is (no pun intended) rock solid and can only be explained away with a sackful of "miracles" engineered by a God who intended to deceive us -- anyone want to believe in that?

 

[bhsmte]

Actually, I think the primary reason people reject the resurrection is scientific, not historical. I think if we occasionally saw people rising from the dead after three days we'd have no problem believing that the Jesus of the NT had also done so. Imo, anyway.

If we had experiences with people rising from the dead, we could then study those circumstances and likely understand them better.

And regarding history, the vast majority of NT historians do not validate the claim of the resurrection as historically credible, because historians determine what the most likely explanation of any event in the past is and they search for various pieces of evidence to determine credibility. Since a miracle (resurrection) by definition is the least likely explanation, it can not be verified by adhering to the historical method.

Again, which is why it must be taken on faith.

 

[Loudmouth]

Actually, I think the primary reason people reject the resurrection is scientific, not historical.

Then I am not your usual person. I tentatively reject the resurrection because there is no evidence for it. I don't cite the absence of other people resurrecting as evidence against Jesus' resurrection.

I think if we occasionally saw people rising from the dead after three days we'd have no problem believing that the Jesus of the NT had also done so. Imo, anyway.

We believe that it was possible that Jesus rode a mule into Jerusalem since people did that all of the time. That doesn't mean he was the Son of God.

 

[EternalDragon]

Hey everyone. I was brought up a Christian fundamentalist. My parents were more or less YECs. As I got older, I got more interested in the creation/evolution debate. Some time in my late teens, my mind finally dealt with the cognitive dissonance and I accepted evolution. Because I had been brought up a YEC (and I can't stress enough the point that YEC is self-defeating, i.e. it is teaching people that they can't use reason AND be Christians, so people who can think choose not to be Christians) I sort of rejected Christianity once I accepted evolution...it didn't occur to me that there was a middle ground.

Well, I get very passionate about this debate. Anyway, Ken Ham will be coming to my church this weekend. He and a man called Dr. Andrew Snelling, one of the AiG staff. They are shipping kids from a local Christian school to come see him. I've known about this for a while. But when I was at church yesterday, I saw advertisements for the Ken Ham event. We got this one in our bulletins: http://calvaryrr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/AIG-Dangerous-ideas-pp.jpg

"Dangerous ideas." The idea of "dangerous ideas" goes against my entire world-outlook...which is freedom of ideas and conversation. This advertisement looks to me like some kind of Cold War propaganda ("The Marxists are coming to destroy your family! Enlist now!").

When I was in church yesterday, it hit me that my church was REALLY endorsing this man. They were endorsing this repression of ideas, this roadblock to scientific progress. Then it struck how delusional all of these people must be to support this man. At that point, I decided that I wanted nothing to do with religion anymore. I was going to be a militant atheist. If religion could brainwash ordinary people in such a way, there was really something wrong with it.

I'm supposed to go to see Ham with some friends of mine from church. I don't think they are very well equipped scientifically and are just as likely to fall for Ken Ham's views as anyone (granted, they are definitely above average intelligence). But I don't know if I even want to go anymore. I am so frustrated that I just want to give up on religion. YEC especially, and the people who want to undermine science (which is a wonderful thing...if anything is going to give us a cure for cancer it is not Jesus it is science!) is about a fight for reason itself.

Anyway, I feel a sort of moral obligation to go. The moral obligation is to ask some questions (hopefully there will be a sort of question time) about the age of the earth, evolution, etc., but fit into there that there IS a middle ground between fundamentalism and reason. I need these people, who come from a similar background as I do (namely fundamentalism), to understand that it's not so black and white (i.e., the Bible is perfect and good, science is evil). Especially the little kids! I really feel a moral outrage that they are being fed this stuff.

Depends on what you define evolution as. No one has any problem accepting that species change and adapt to differing conditions through natural selection. We can observe that.

What you have with evolution is a bunch of what if's and maybe this or that happened, thrown into the mix and accepted as fact. Evolution is observable fact mixed in with a bunch of assumptions about the past which is not observed.

So the conflict really is with man's word or God's word. Which one do you trust more? Or do you not even believe the bible when it says God guided men to write His words?

 

[Loudmouth]

What you have with evolution is a bunch of what if's and maybe this or that happened, thrown into the mix and accepted as fact. Evolution is observable fact mixed in with a bunch of assumptions about the past which is not observed.

This is the type of nonsense that Ryukil is talking about. Creationists continually misrepresent the science as you do. You won't deal with the evidence, and keep making false allegations of using assumptions.

 

[RickG]

This is the type of nonsense that Ryukil is talking about. Creationists continually misrepresent the science as you do. You won't deal with the evidence, and keep making false allegations of using assumptions.

Ditto.

 

[EternalDragon]

This is the type of nonsense that Ryukil is talking about. Creationists continually misrepresent the science as you do. You won't deal with the evidence, and keep making false allegations of using assumptions.

I'm not misrepresenting science in any way. It's already misrepresented.

 

[EternalDragon]

So it was a miracle that God made the earth look much, much older than it really is??

The earth was created mature just as everything else was from stars to plants to Adam and Eve. There is no miracle or mystery to it.