Theological Problems of Creationism

[gluadys]

Are you telling me, Lucaspa, that no one can properly reconcile these accounts?

Wouldn't make any difference if someone could. The impetus to reconcile means the conflicts exist. If there were no contradictions in the accounts, no one would think they had to be reconciled.

And just why do they need to be reconciled anyway? Why not let the contradictions stand without comment?

 

[Mallon]

Wouldn't make any difference if someone could. The impetus to reconcile means the conflicts exist. If there were no contradictions in the accounts, no one would think they had to be reconciled.

And just why do they need to be reconciled anyway? Why not let the contradictions stand without comment?

Aye. Besides, the accounts can't be reconciled without reading your own additions into the text. For example, Genesis 2 says "all" birds were created after Adam, not just some of them. This flies in the face of Genesis 1. The accounts cannot be reconciled without contradicting the words of Genesis 2.

 

[Assyrian]

Yet your interpretation of Genesis 1 falls apart if we look at Genesis 2 and you have to steer clear of the passage. Two great accounts of Creation in the beginning of Genesis and your interpretation only works if you avoid one of them. As I said, Genesis 2 pwns your interpretation of Genesis 1. If you want to talk about scripture interpretation in terms of pwning that is.

Interpreting the Bible that way is certainly your prerogative.

It is an account, it is in the bible, it is about creation. It tells how God took a dry barren world without plants and made Adam and Eve, formed all the animals and birds and planted a garden there. I don't care whether you consider it a second creation account or not. It does not even matter if you don't think it is a great account of creation. The fact is, you have to ignore this description of creation to make your interpretation of Genesis 1 work.

 

[lucaspa]

"I would no more accept Darwinian evolution as Christian then I would gnosticism."​

​

If you read the OP again, you will see that creationism is gnosticism. YEC explicitly separated the god of creation from the god of salvation. ID does the same. In their writings for the general public where IDers are touting ID as a scientific theory, they are very careful to say that they cannot identify the Designer as God. So once again ID presents us with the basics of gnosticism and Manicheanism: one deity to create and another for salvation.

 

[lucaspa]

Are you telling me, Lucaspa, that no one can properly reconcile these accounts?

Not if they are read literally. If you read them as they were intended, then the theological messages can easily be reconciled. Because they are different theological messages.

Genesis 1 is about eliminating the Babylonian pantheon and providing (an unnecessary) justification for the Sabbath.

Genesis 2-3 is about
1) explaining via allegory how people are spiritually cut off from God.
2) that the Egyptian idea that enough knowledge will allow you to be God is wrong.
3) providing some cute, but naive, explanations as to why farming is so difficult, why people hate snakes, why childbirth is so painful, and why women -- even tho childbirth is so painful -- go back and have sex again.

AVVET, the last time I was in Barnes and Nobles and looked at their collection of Biblical commentary on Genesis, all seven of the commentaries stated that there were two different creation stories in Genesis 1-3. It is the hermeneutics you are using poor exegesis.

 

[lucaspa]

That's why I keep the two separate.

No, you don't. Look below in your post. I said creationism is different from creation and you said: "Okay.Okay.I don't agree, but for the sake of the discussion"...

If you want the how, it is called creatio ex nihilo --- where exactly is the problem?

That's not all the "how". Genesis 1 (and young earth creationism) have much more than creatio ex nihilo of the universe. There's
1. Creatio ex nihilo of individual components of the universe: sun, earth, stars, living organisms.
2. There's a sequence of this creatio ex nihilo: some things were created before others.
3. There's a time limit: all things were created within a single 144 hour period.
4. There's a limit into the past: creation happened no more than 10,000 years ago.
5. There's an explanation for geology: Flood Geology.

Just as "weight" occurs when gravity is resisted, "problems" occur when creatio ex nihilo is resisted.

But if you are reading Genesis 1 literally, creatio ex nihilo is resisted anyway! Genesis 1:2: "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

The waters are pre-existing.

Before one cries "contradiction", one should make every attempt to reconcile the opposing passages. That's the proper way to do it.

Been done and failed. I notice you offered no reconciliation. Read literally, it is not possible to reconcile the stories.

Imagine if scientists took that attitude towards the Light Paradox and went no further, claiming it's a contradiction.

Actually, they did. They never have reconciled the wave and particle nature of light. We accept that light has these two aspects.

You're assuming that creation is an on-going process --- that God is still creating today --- and He is not. The Creation was a one-time, one-week act, done in the absence of the Laws of Thermodynamics.

1. I never brought up thermodynamics.
2. I'm not "assuming", but rather we can conclude that creation is ongoing. I don't see a problem with that. After all, it simply means that God's purpose is ongoing.
3. According to Genesis 2, at least the first 4 days of creation were done in one day.

Only, as I said, if you assume it was done (or still in progress) under the Laws of Thermodynamics.

I'm not assuming that at all. Right now the Laws of Thermo are in operation, but we still see the creation of new stars and new species. Why do you think God is absent from that?

Well, as I have said before, I really don't use the term creationism --- it is a much misused, misunderstood term --- and frankly, it is the choice term of Atheists and Scientists,

It's the term creationists used to describe the idea. Everyone else used it because the people who advocated the idea used it. All they were doing was using integrity. For instance, if you search Answers in Genesis using "creationism" as your search term, you get 21,600 hits:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/search/?q=creationism#q=creationism&site=default_collection

Then, of course, there is www.creationism.org that advocates exactly what you do.

So tell us, why do you want to abandon the term now?

Here's your "creation story" pertaining to angels

That's not exactly a "creation story", is it? It's part of a verse. Let's look at the entire verse:
"Who maketh his angels spirits; his ministers a flaming fire:"

It doesn't really say God created the angels, does it? If we think this is about creation of angels, it's also about creation of "ministers", isn't it? Who or what are those? And why are they a "flaming fire".?

Also, it appears it isn't even talking about "angels". Another translation reads:
"he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire."

That doesn't say He created angels, but rather turned existing angels into "winds".

Oh, the direct translation from Hebrew says:
"He makes his messengers winds; His servants flames of fire."

Yeah, nothing about creation but changing the form of something that is already there. I'm afraid your reliance on King James has blinded you to what the Bible really says.

 

[champuru]

AV1611VET You completely ignored my last post

 

[AV1611VET]

Lucaspa --- QV please --- 21 .

 

[AV1611VET]

AV1611VET You completely ignored my last post

Highlight in red the part you want me to address, and I'll address them.

No, as I said the sun is about 4.57 billion and the Earth is 4.54 about billion.


No I think whales are about 53 million years older


umm... not much


Sure if taken to be literal. And Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, Psalm 104:5, and I Chronicles 16:30 pwns Heliocentrism. And Job 37:18 pwns the idea that the sky is made of gases and not cast bronze.



Well if everything has to be taken literally then the two chapters must comply with each other. But lets talk about Genesis 1. There is day and night without a sun. The sky is really an ocean above our heads. And there are plants without the sun... these things make perfect sense

 

[Assyrian]

The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; aand as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. (1Cor 15:47,48)

Obviously Paul saw Adam as the first man. He says so in the verse. The question is, did Paul mean the same thing by 'the first man', as your literal interpretation does? If Paul was simple discussing Adam as the literal and historical first man who ever existed, how is Christ 'the second Man'? According to a plain literal and historical interpretation the second man was Cain. And there have been millions of men born between Cain and Christ. Clearly Paul was not talking in the same literal or historical sense you assume here.

He didn't say the "second man" ---

1 Corinthians 15:45[/size]]And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

Sorry AV, that is verse 45, Mark was quoting verses 47 and 48.

1Cor 15:45 And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.
47 The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.
48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly.

 

[champuru]

Highlight in red the part you want me to address, and I'll address them.

okie dokie


No, as I said the sun is about 4.57 billion and the Earth is 4.54 about billion.


No I think whales are about 53 million years older


umm... not much


Sure if taken to be literal. And Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, Psalm 104:5, and I Chronicles 16:30 pwns Heliocentrism. And Job 37:18 pwns the idea that the sky is made of gases and not cast bronze.



Well if everything has to be taken literally then the two chapters must comply with each other. But lets talk about Genesis 1. There is day and night without a sun. The sky is really an ocean above our heads. And there are plants without the sun... these things make perfect sense

 

[AV1611VET]

No, as I said the sun is about 4.57 billion and the Earth is 4.54 about billion.

No argument here.

No I think whales are about 53 million years older

Either that, or they're one day older.

Either way, it's recorded that they came before man --- which is a violation of evolution.

Sure if taken to be literal. And Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, Psalm 104:5, and I Chronicles 16:30 pwns Heliocentrism. And Job 37:18 pwns the idea that the sky is made of gases and not cast bronze.

I'm going to take the easy [lazy] way out of this one, since you have so many verses, and just say that one needs to be very careful with using Hebrew Poetry to defend doctrine.

The Chronicles passage ---

Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.

--- would not be talking about the earth not moving relative to outer space; no more than I would be immoveable if I were singing:

I shall not be, I shall not be moved.
I shall not be, I shall not be moved.
Just like a tree planted by the waters, LORD,
I shall not be moved.
​

In accordance with Psalm 62 ---

He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence; I shall not be moved.

--- am I immoveable?

Well if everything has to be taken literally then the two chapters must comply with each other. But lets talk about Genesis 1. There is day and night without a sun. The sky is really an ocean above our heads. And there are plants without the sun... these things make perfect sense

I'll get back with you on this one later.

 

[champuru]

No argument here.Either that, or they're one day older.

okay

Either way, it's recorded that they came before man --- which is a violation of evolution.

how is that a violation of evolution?

I'm going to take the easy [lazy] way out of this one, since you have so many verses, and just say that one needs to be very careful with using Hebrew Poetry to defend doctrine.

I agree with you here.

The Chronicles passage ------ would not be talking about the earth not moving relative to outer space; no more than I would be immoveable if I were singing:

I shall not be, I shall not be moved.
I shall not be, I shall not be moved.
Just like a tree planted by the waters, LORD,
I shall not be moved.
​

In accordance with Psalm 62 ------ am I immoveable?

I'll agree with you on the meaning here, but what I'm saying is that there are many parts in the bible that are metaphors, allegory, etc. Why not Genesis 1?

I'll get back with you on this one later.

okay

 

[mindlight]

1) The nature and origin of sin

First of all, I'd like to say these are my personal views, and not necessarily those of all TEs. Sin originates with Satan and is when humans go against God's desires of us.

Yes but thats dodging the point really. What a TE is saying is that the literal account of the origin of sin (with the apple and temptation by devil snake etc) is not the true account of the origin of sin. It's only a metaphor of how sin arose. So if one cannot tie the origin of human sin to a particular human act and to a moment in time when the fall of man occurred then what do we mean by it at all. If there was no apple and no rule "thou shalt not eat..." what was the sin? The moment you make a metaphor out of something like sin you move into very dangerous territory. Is the rule against murder for instance is only a metaphorical one and open to interpretation?

2) The apparent brutality and numbers of errors in the creation process over what seems an inordinant period of time. The questions that raises about evil and suffering.

The apparent brutality and number of errors in the creation process is also a creationist theological issue. People are still born with deformities, whether you believe in evolution or not.

Creationists do not believe that the original creation included these defects but that they arose due to the consequences of living in a sinful world. God made us good. TEs seem to be saying that God is like some kind of experimental biologist (but of course not just an impotent observor of processes they cannot mimic like all experimental biologists today) who is able to create life in his little pet project testube(planet earth) in his hobby room (the Universe) and keeps playing around with it until he gets a design he likes. At which point after trillions of aborted attempts at life he turns around and says umm not bad - good in fact!

3) The origin and progress of the different races relative to one another and their relative dignity

By races do you mean in biology or human classification?

The Nazi interpretation of evolutionary theory was that given some races are clearly less advanced than others e.g. blacks - they are inferior even subhuman. To kill what is subhuman in order to purify the race and leave what is strong was not wrong in their view. Creationists have no problem with race since we are all descended from Adam and are therefore from the same stock. Modern science bears this out as the genetic differences between the different races are not significant in terms of assessing our origins and relative potentials.

4) The apparent errors of New Testament commentators on OT realities while divinely inspired including the words of Jesus.

It depends on what verses you are talking about.

Cop out... Jesus quotes from genesis 2 affirming its authority when talking about divorce. He talks about literal events like the flood - at the time of Noah etc. paul is clearly affirming a literal Adam in Romans when he refers to the sinful man of the earth. If there were wrong about these being literal historical why should I trust judgments they make on other matters? If I say the NT definitely affirms a literal historical resurrection why do I deny that the OT scriptures should also be taken literally. This is merely a more subtle form of Marcionite heresy.

5) The nature of man in the Old Earth macroevolutionary timescale as an apparent late after thought rather than one made in the image of God.

Not necessarily. If you look at the Genesis time scale, humans were the last creation. You could ask the same question as to why God didn't create man on the first day? With a being like God, time has no real bearing. It makes little difference whether he created humans on the 6th day or a few billion years.

It makes a big difference to the veracity of the Biblical account. God himself affirms the 6 days in Exodus 20 in the sabbath commandment. Also whats does it mean to be made in the image of God if billions of experimental versions were tried and rejected on the path to creating me. In the creation miracles Jesus sets his mind to do a thing and it is done - water into wine, fish and bread from thin air and not over a process of billions of years- instantly. If God determines to do a thing he is not a man that he should continually change his mind as to the form that that will take. He wills it and it is done.

 

[mindlight]

What logical reasons do you have for saying this is NOT the case? Steno's laws of superposition and continuity are accepted even by most YECs. What reasons do you have for rejecting them?

This isn't an assumption. We can now date strata using a variety of means. Besides, given the diversity of palaeoenvironments that are represented in the sedimentary record (forests upon deserts upon inland seas), it makes no sense whatsoever that these strata could be deposited in a matter of just a few years. Not unless you want to infer miracle upon miracle upon miracle.

Please elaborate. Do you have any doubt that, say, this isn't a fossil insect?

There are no hydrological, ecological, or functional mechanisms by which to explain the order of the fossil record, mindlight. Some of the earliest fossils in the fossil record had no means by which to burrow. And some of the best burrowers (moles and snakes and whatnot) are found only in the uppermost strata. That explanation makes no sense. It's just an ad hoc assumption designed solely to prop up broken framework.
Try to explain the distribution of pollen or turtles or whales.

That's really what it all comes down to for you, eh? We can't be 100% certain about anything, therefore all explanations of the data are equally likely? Young earth, global flood scenarios are just as likely as old earth, evolutionary scenarios even though the former cannot explain any of the data? Sorry, but I respectfully disagree. Regardless, I'll feign from debating the subject any further because we've gone waaay off topic.

I have not properly addressed your points but we are off OP here and so I will try to come back in another OP at another time. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[mindlight]

1) The nature and origin of sin

This is probably the most difficult one for both those who accept and those who reject evolution. Part of the problem can be relieved with the realization that evolution does not necessarily rule out a literal Adam as the first human and an ancestor of all living humans. Given that option--which some TEs take, there is really no difference between a YEC and a TE view on the nature and origin of sin.

If you accept a literal Adam being the crucial point here - thats not the majority viewpoint for TEs.

Nor is there any real problem with the nature of sin. For a TE as for a YEC/OEC etc. the nature of sin is rebellion against God and assuming a position of human autonomy or self-rule.

We may agree on what sin is in practice - true - although your definition reveals a liberal view of the autonomous individual which also permeates your theological reflections.

So that leaves the origin of sin. And we can ask that in two parts: the origin of sin in each human individual and the origin of sin in humanity as a whole.

Does the origin of sin in each human individual require a biological relationship to an ancestor who was the first sinner? If so, we must posit an individual Adam. Or does the origin of sin in each individual come from the assertion of autonomy which is part of human nature? In the latter case, we do not necessarily need a particular individual as our first parent, since what needs to be explained is how the instinct of rebellious autonomy came to be part of our human nature--not how it is derived from a particular ancestor. In this case, we can view chapters 2-3 of Genesis as a typological story of all humanity, and not of specific individuals.

One still needs to consider the historical development of sinfulness in humanity and I don't pretend anyone has a complete handle on that. But unless one assumes that our relationship to sin is mediated by a biological relationship to an ancestral Adam, the theological door is left open to discuss other options, both with and without a literal, historical Adam.

Now this is interesting. If Adams Ancestry here is biological it is irrelevant to sin. But later when we discuss race the characteristics can be cultural since we all share in the same biology. My own view is that sin has had genetic and cultural repercussions. Creation itself has been warped by sin and thus its communication to us distorted. Also we are born into a culture of sin and in that we relate to one another we are influenced by this culture. Thus we are born with a genetic predisposition to sin and are also victims of a sinful world. Yet nonetheless we can be held responsible and still have the ability to make choices. It is for these choices we shall be judged. God alone knows how difficult it is for some to be good in certain areas and how easy for others. Is human development in history seen as a fall from a state of perfection or one of evolutionary progress. If evolutionary progress then we are moving towards a better and a more enduring physiology that is better able to survive and thrive in this environment. If we have fallen then that might explain massive reductions in human life span as we have had to deal with an increasingly hsotile world environment over the millenia.Those who are being redeemed may indeed see a measure of return to perfection but this is to do with moral choices and Gods grace and not a materialistic biological process running in the background. The Bible speaks of a fall with consequences in history. While evolutionary theory speaks of a progression of the species and the strong thriving and the weak perishing.

2) The apparent brutality and numbers of errors in the creation process over what seems an inordinant period of time. The questions that raises about evil and suffering.

Actually, it raises no more questions than a non-evolutionary view. As Darwin asks, do we really want to believe that God deliberately created parasitic wasps to feed on the interior of living caterpillars?

I believe God created parasitical wasps like that. But is Gods breath of life in mere insects? The way these have started to ruin human life has to do with the curse on the ground and the struggle that followed the fall and expulsion from Eden.

Darwin took his notion of a struggle for existence from the observations of Malthus. Malthus came to the conclusion that famine, disease and war were necessary to continued human existence, since without them population increase would outrun the necessary increase in resources to sustain life.

Darwin simply generalized Malthus' ideas to all species. And it is true that given reproducing species, they will overpopulate the planet in a finite time unless the population is restricted by some means. Those means may appear brutal, but it is a brutality that requires as much in theodicy from a non-evolutionary as from an evolutionary perspective.

Malthus was deeply wrong about the limits to human growth because he failed to anticipate the expansion in agricultural area available from the colonial ventures of the UK , the various agricultural revolutions and the most recently the arrival of GMOs. Darwins views held many errors including these.

 

[mindlight]

I'm curious as to why, in your cosmogony, this degradation of evidence by time or distance should exist. According to YECism, the universe is 6,000 years old. What time? What distance? A few thousand years is a blink of the eye in geological contexts. It's enough time for Mount Everest to move about, say, a few centimeters. How remote can any part of the universe possibly get within six thousand years?

That degradation by time or distance would exist in the evolutionary model is quite true, and it would be a good cautionary for all who would accept evolutionary conclusions (though, like most of conventional science, I think that our techniques are powerful enough today to understand and put limits on the extent of this degradation, if not remove it altogether). But that is no explanation for why such degradation should exist within your model of the universe, and it is in fact an argument against your model as much as it is against ours. The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend ...

Because I actually think evidence degrades that fast. How long will your body last out on the streets of Sydney if you died today and people actually left you there. Within a decade it would just be bones broken by childrens bikes , dogs peeing or walking, cars parking, and a few decades later dust blown away by the wind? Human interpretations also change rapidly from century to century and the report of the facts today is radically different from each of the accounts of the last 20 centuries. 98% of Mallons fossils never got to be fossils cause actually its quite hard to be a fossil!! In fact most fossils are freaks of circumstance. You do not get perfectly preserved dragon fly fossils most of the time. The dead remains decompose , are pecked at , walked on, blown away etc etc. What remains is stuff that sank in the right clay or was buried in rapidly formed rocks e.g. the fish giving birth fossil. In other words we examine the remains of freaks and call it science. And do we know the real history of these places we examine - no! How or why parts of the Gobi desert were once inland seas (just hundreds or thousands of years ago in some cases) and are now deserts. Before that under ice, maybe before that forests and all that in several thousand years. Things happen rapidly in the wolrd we can observe so why do we take this chilled out (I have billions and billions of years for this one) approach.

As my dark matter thread last year illustrates - 95% of the mass of the universe is accounted for by dark energy and dark matter about which we know next to nothing. We observe stuff that exists on the electromagnetic spectrum and say we know whats out there - Bah humbug!!

 

[AV1611VET]

Champuru, I edited your post slightly for ease of answering --- I hope you don't mind.

But lets talk about Genesis 1.

1. There is day and night without a sun.
2. The sky is really an ocean above our heads.
3. And there are plants without the sun... these things make perfect sense

I didn't change any of the words, I just added a format.

1. Yes, since the sun didn't come along until Day 4, there was no "evening and morning".

But the point of the passage though is the amount of time that transpired.

By wording it this way, we know that as much time transpired during these sunless hours as transpired during the hours with the sun. In other words, we know it took three days.

Had God not worded it this way, we couldn't tell how much time elapsed, and then we would not be able to defend against allegations that millions (or billions) of years went by before God spoke again.

In addition, God used this work week as a model of the work week that He imposed on us in the Ten Commandments; saying, in effect, "I worked six days, then rested --- you do the same."

I believe He purposely took six days so as to do it this way; after all, He could have just spoken His whole creation into existence in a moment of time.

2. There are three "skies" mentioned in the Bible --- called "firmaments" or "heavens". A firmament is nothing more than a containment field, populated by whatever God places within its boundaries.

1st Heaven = our atmosphere
2nd Heaven = outer space
3rd Heaven = Heaven proper
​

3. I personally believe God "mixed up" the order of His creation on purpose, knowing that in the future, there would come a time when some would believe in evolution.

For example, since plants were created before the sun, yet rely on the sun for survival, God knew that it would be easy to assume that the sun came before the plants --- this is why He documented what He did (Genesis 1) and preserved it through all generations (Psalm 12:7).

 

[pgp_protector]

Champuru, I edited your post slightly for ease of answering --- I hope you don't mind.I didn't change any of the words, I just added a format.

1. Yes, since the sun didn't come along until Day 4, there was no "evening and morning".
...snip...

So this is wrong ? And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

 

[AV1611VET]

So this is wrong ? And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

It's not wrong, it's simply God's choice of words.

As I said, He used the exact same words on days without the sun as He used on days with the sun, to show us that the exact same amount of time transpired.

In the English language, I believe that is called a parallelism.