why are christians "challenging" the young earth creationism?

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Dylan_Chica

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until today when i registred i didn't use that term but i know i believe that god created the earth in six days, and what i feel is other christians sometimes distort (not in a bad way, more like interpreting too far) what the bible says in order to make it fit their own views, their own beliefs and i respect that but isn't christianity all about surrendering your life and heart to the hands of jesus and let your faith in him which means also the bible, guide your way in life? i just don't understand this "challenging" after reading the forums today :sigh:
 
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rmwilliamsll

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Some wise words from St. Augustine (A.D. 354-430)

Often a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other parts of the world, about the motions and orbits of the stars and even their sizes and distances,... and this knowledge he holds with certainty from reason and experience. It is thus offensive and disgraceful for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talk nonsense about such things, claiming that what he is saying is based in Scripture. We should do all that we can to avoid such an embarrassing situation, lest the unbeliever see only ignorance in the Christian and laugh to scorn.

- St. Augustine, "De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim" (The Literal Meaning of Genesis).

quoted from:
http://www.christianforums.com/t2421308-some-wise-words-from-st-augustine-ad-354-430.html

someone here uses it for a .sig as well.
 
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random_guy

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Dylan_Chica said:
until today when i registred i didn't use that term but i know i believe that god created the earth in six days, and what i feel is other christians sometimes distort (not in a bad way, more like interpreting too far) what the bible says in order to make it fit their own views, their own beliefs and i respect that but isn't christianity all about surrendering your life and heart to the hands of jesus and let your faith in him which means also the bible, guide your way in life? i just don't understand this "challenging" after reading the forums today :sigh:

I wrote a long reply in your other topic, but before I could post it, the data was wiped. However, the gist of it was that if you preach a 6000 year old Earth, a global flood, an evolutionists' conspiracy to suppress real scientific research at all universities and colleges, Christians may seem like nutcases to non-believers.

You must remember at every single accreditted university, the Earth is taught to be billions of years old. This is due to the overwhelming evidence that science has uncovered. Basically, it falsely creates an impression that one must reject science to accept Christianity.
 
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mark kennedy

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Christians who believe that the Bible is telling us that God created the earth in 6 days in Genesis 1 are a minority these days. Science is telling us that we evolved from apes and the earth is a whole lot older. The reason Christians disagree on here about evolution is largely due to the fact that most Theistic evolutionists agree with the scientists.

The modern world sees the Bible as a big book of fairytales, myths and stories. There are still some of us who trust the Bible as history and consider the idea of apes turning into men a fairytale as well. So we ended up with a fourm where we could talk about these things.

Grace and peace,
Mark
 
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vossler

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Dylan_Chica said:
until today when i registered i didn't use that term but i know i believe that god created the earth in six days, and what i feel is other christians sometimes distort (not in a bad way, more like interpreting too far) what the bible says in order to make it fit their own views, their own beliefs and i respect that but isn't christianity all about surrendering your life and heart to the hands of jesus and let your faith in him which means also the bible, guide your way in life? i just don't understand this "challenging" after reading the forums today :sigh:
Dylan, welcome to CF and more specifically the Origins Theology area.

Get used to God's Word being challenged. Unfortunately, it happens quite often, yet rarely directly. That's how the thief is, he rarely comes straight at you, he's always looking for an unlocked window or other entrance.

We've compromised God's Word so that it can comply with the god of science and thereby have melded the two into one which has resulted in the compromise called evolution. :(
 
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rmwilliamsll

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mark kennedy said:
Christians who believe that the Bible is telling us that God created the earth in 6 days in Genesis 1 are a minority these days. Science is telling us that we evolved from apes and the earth is a whole lot older. The reason Christians disagree on here about evolution is largely due to the fact that most Theistic evolutionists agree with the scientists.

The modern world sees the Bible as a big book of fairytales, myths and stories. There are still some of us who trust the Bible as history and consider the idea of apes turning into men a fairytale as well. So we ended up with a fourm where we could talk about these things.

Grace and peace,
Mark

the radical dichotomy raises it's head again:

modern=evolutionary=Bible as fairytales, myths and stories
versus
us minority=6 day recent creation=trusting Bible as history

the problem is that it is conflating 3 very different things.

(1)inspiration and authority of the Scriptures, with a (2)particular interpretation and modern hermeneutic ie YECism concerning the first few chapters of Genesis and a (3)series of scientific questions:age of the earth, origin of humanity.

wrapping up what are spectrums of answers on the first two questions with a denial of the 3rd, into a package called YECism and posing the idea that the only other option is atheistic materialistic evolutionism.


a nice debate tactic and rhetorical method but hardly conductive of real learning and study of the issues.
 
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philN

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Cosmologically speaking, here are the facts that we know for certain: the earth exists in a galaxy, there are millions of other galaxies out in interstellar space, all other galaxies are moving away from us (and we are moving away from other galaxies), the universe is expanding, the furthest galaxies are approximately 14 billion lightyears away from us and are at the edge of the expanding universe as we see it.

Now, if all of these things are moving away at a constant rate (meaning consistent, not necessarily the same speed), then it can be reversed that approximately 13.6 billion years ago, all of these galaxies were very close together and were driven apart by some force (possibly a "big bang" or sorts).

Now, it could be that God created the earth in 6 days and created it so that it looks like a big bang caused all of these galaxies to spread throughout interstellar space-time. Or it could be that God was the cause of this initial bang that seperated all of these galaxies and caused the universe to expand (string theory and membrane theories are speculative, because scientists do not know exactly what caused the universe to begin expanding or "bang", if you will.).

The only problem with the latter of these is that it "goes against" what the bible says. Actually, it goes against a literalist interpretation of the Genesis account. Understand, the Bible is written by people of Jewish descent. A common form of explanation of history or things that were not completely known is storytelling or mythology. I would suggest that the Genesis account is not a step-by-step guide to how God created the universe but rather a mytho-poetic explanation for what God did. This would mean that God did create the Earth, but did not necessarily do it in 6 days (also days are a completely relative term because time is relative and the Hebrew is ambiguous as to what is meant by "day"). This would also mean that stories like the Tower of Babel were not historical events perhaps, but rather explanation for why there are many languages.

I am a Christian. I love reading the Bible and I have grown to appreciate it even more when I was able to accept the fact that it has logical loophole and flaws. Those don't make it any less authoritative or important, it just means that Jewish theology revolves around block logic, so the scriptures are intended to be read as such rather than as a black-and-white newspaper. When you read the Bible with a western mindset, you are approaching it with an enormous bias that will likely skew the information that you take in.
 
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Dannager

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philN said:
Cosmologically speaking, here are the facts that we know for certain: the earth exists in a galaxy, there are millions of other galaxies out in interstellar space, all other galaxies are moving away from us (and we are moving away from other galaxies), the universe is expanding, the furthest galaxies are approximately 14 billion lightyears away from us and are at the edge of the expanding universe as we see it.

Now, if all of these things are moving away at a constant rate (meaning consistent, not necessarily the same speed), then it can be reversed that approximately 13.6 billion years ago, all of these galaxies were very close together and were driven apart by some force (possibly a "big bang" or sorts).

Now, it could be that God created the earth in 6 days and created it so that it looks like a big bang caused all of these galaxies to spread throughout interstellar space-time. Or it could be that God was the cause of this initial bang that seperated all of these galaxies and caused the universe to expand (string theory and membrane theories are speculative, because scientists do not know exactly what caused the universe to begin expanding or "bang", if you will.).

The only problem with the latter of these is that it "goes against" what the bible says. Actually, it goes against a literalist interpretation of the Genesis account. Understand, the Bible is written by people of Jewish descent. A common form of explanation of history or things that were not completely known is storytelling or mythology. I would suggest that the Genesis account is not a step-by-step guide to how God created the universe but rather a mytho-poetic explanation for what God did. This would mean that God did create the Earth, but did not necessarily do it in 6 days (also days are a completely relative term because time is relative and the Hebrew is ambiguous as to what is meant by "day"). This would also mean that stories like the Tower of Babel were not historical events perhaps, but rather explanation for why there are many languages.

I am a Christian. I love reading the Bible and I have grown to appreciate it even more when I was able to accept the fact that it has logical loophole and flaws. Those don't make it any less authoritative or important, it just means that Jewish theology revolves around block logic, so the scriptures are intended to be read as such rather than as a black-and-white newspaper. When you read the Bible with a western mindset, you are approaching it with an enormous bias that will likely skew the information that you take in.
This is a very good explanation.
 
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Willtor

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vossler said:
Dylan, welcome to CF and more specifically the Origins Theology area.

Get used to God's Word being challenged. Unfortunately, it happens quite often, yet rarely directly. That's how the thief is, he rarely comes straight at you, he's always looking for an unlocked window or other entrance.

We've compromised God's Word so that it can comply with the god of science and thereby have melded the two into one which has resulted in the compromise called evolution. :(

I really don't appreciate being compared to a thief. Or if the thief is Satan and I am the unwitting fodder, I don't appreciate that too much, either. You'd do better, by me, to back up your interpretation of Genesis than to make these sorts of comparisons. Even if I disagree with you, then, at least I'll respect what you have to say.
 
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vossler

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Willtor said:
I really don't appreciate being compared to a thief. Or if the thief is Satan and I am the unwitting fodder, I don't appreciate that too much, either. You'd do better, by me, to back up your interpretation of Genesis than to make these sorts of comparisons. Even if I disagree with you, then, at least I'll respect what you have to say.
Willtor, please don't see this as personal, it is not meant to be. I'm just being as honest as I can be without making this personal. I would expect the same from you. My position is against evolution, not my brothers in Christ.

The thief is always Satan and all of us are, at one time or another, unwitting fodder for him and I don't appreciate it when I've been duped by him either.

What's there to back up, the Bible is very clear as to the timeline of creation. Billions of years don't fit into six days no matter how you package it.
 
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rmwilliamsll

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The thief is always Satan and all of us are, at one time or another, unwitting fodder for him and I don't appreciate it when I've been duped by him either.


it's amazing how the same ideas just keep going around and around.

this is decartes demon.
or better yet, the modern version of morton's demon.
 
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Willtor

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vossler said:
Willtor, please don't see this as personal, it is not meant to be. I'm just being as honest as I can be without making this personal. I would expect the same from you. My position is against evolution, not my brothers in Christ.

The thief is always Satan and all of us are, at one time or another, unwitting fodder for him and I don't appreciate it when I've been duped by him either.

What's there to back up, the Bible is very clear as to the timeline of creation. Billions of years don't fit into six days no matter how you package it.

Certainly, I think YECism is at best a harmless misunderstanding, and at worst an undermining of Christian theology. Whether YECs are fodder for the devil, it's not really my place to say. Either way, I'm going to try to convince them away from these views that I see as mistaken. If I say you are fodder for Satan, I am asserting more than I know. Besides, if you are right (about YECism), then not only am I wrong about TE, but I was dreadfully in error regarding Satan's grasp.

At any rate, let us talk theology and science, and not explicitly concern ourselves with the affairs of the devil.
 
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vossler

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Willtor said:
Besides, if you are right (about YECism), then not only am I wrong about TE, but I was dreadfully in error regarding Satan's grasp.
Satan's grasp is everywhere, all untruths lie with him.
Willtor said:
At any rate, let us talk theology and science, and not explicitly concern ourselves with the affairs of the devil.
We should always be concerning ourselves with the affairs of Satan.

1 Peter 5:8 states: "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."
 
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Willtor

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vossler said:
Satan's grasp is everywhere, all untruths lie with him.
We should always be concerning ourselves with the affairs of Satan.

1 Peter 5:8 states: "Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."

Emphasis on "explicitly."
 
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Dylan_Chica

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Mandrake said:
Ah yes..... TEs hate God, but do it in a roundabout way, so that we get fooled more easily. They are being used by Satan to corrupt Christianity. Give me a break.
that actually hurt and gave me a slight sting in my heart, no where would i ever imply that another christian "hates god" and i don't know why you are saying this. what's the matter with you?
 
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Dannager

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Dylan_Chica said:
that actually hurt and gave me a slight sting in my heart, no where would i ever imply that another christian "hates god" and i don't know why you are saying this. what's the matter with you?
Don't worry, Dylan_Chica, I'm pretty sure Mandrake's comments were directed at the inflammatory post made by vossler (http://www.christianforums.com/showpost.php?p=23009096&postcount=5), not your post.
 
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