Why do creationists insist that the theory of evolution is inherently atheistic?

[AV1611VET]

I told you, pick any of your fruit challenge threads. There have been many of them and you say the same thing in every one.

Now, you are aware that the main problem with what you say is that it leads to your God being called a deceiver, which leads us back to your original post in which you talk about your God being called a deceiver and then use a Bible quote about Jesus as a comparison. I'm asking you how that comparison fits.

You've lost your credibility with me, my friend.

 

[TheReasoner]

Well God can't lie and that says all of the people were killed and it later says all the animals and plants were destroyed so unless the whole earth was flooded, it couldn't have happened

God cannot lie. Okay. Again, why is it evident that the flood never happened. It cannot have happened, nothing adds up. It does if you say as is right that what to bronze age men and women would be considered the whole world was a local area as opposed to the entire planet. But otherwise, if you insist as americans and charismatics tend to be the only ones who do, that the entire globe was flooded then god is lying.

Either you've misinterpreted the text, frenchfyre, or god is lying in the text. Or he is lying in creation. Because it didn't happen. Certainly not globally.

Before you insist that it did, please answer my question as to why you choose the solution which demands god being a liar, as opposed to the solution of you admitting to being a human who can be wrong upon occasion.

 

[TheReasoner]

You've lost your credibility with me, my friend.

And you dodge, refusing to answer. Instead stooping to such low levels as mudslinging.

Are you a man or a mouse, AV? Own up. Answer the man.

 

[Doveaman]

OR you're wrong.

OR I’m right.

It has happened before.

No it hasn’t.

People used to say the bible supported slavery, racial segregation, gender discrimination, wars, geocentrism and even a flat world. You would consider all of these people obviouslt wrong (I hope) yet somehow you do not see that you are guilty of the same 'sin'.

Rubbish.

Yet a denial of YOUR INTERPRETATION would not be so. Yet you blaspheme and put your own interpretation in your god's place. It is not his word you revere, if it were you would admit to your own fallibility in it's interpretation. Despite people making the same mistake time and time again before you, you refuse to learn and arrogantly state that this time you are absolutely right in your human understanding. So right in fact that annoying things like evidence and facts that contradict your opinion can be readily dismissed without further thought.
Such fanaticism is dangerous, doveaman.

More rubbish.

Well, in these questions, such as the age of the universe, whether a global flood occurred or not, whether evolution is real... We're not talking about hypotheses, but solidly confirmed theories.

Any theory that contradicts God's inspired word (the Bible) is a denial of God's inspired truth.

"Confirmation" has no real meaning in science. Just like "proof" and "facts" and "truth'. They are all meaningless in science. That's why "solidly confirmed theories" are falsified all the time.

A believer would say that the study of god's creation would not possibly contradict god, but only help him cleanse himself of misconceptions about god.

An understanding of creation, just like the Bible, requires interpretation. Sometimes we get them both wrong.

Yet you deny what you think your god gave you in terms of creation in favor of your own mind's shoddy, unwise and gridlocked thinking.

Nope. I am simply denying your interpretation of creation just like you are denying my interpretation of the Bible.



_____________________

 

[Mr Strawberry]

You've lost your credibility with me, my friend.

Well, if you actually paid more attention to the Bible quotes you use and tried not to just pick them at random and claim they are relevant then you wouldn't have to answer awkward questions. It's your own fault.

 

[Tomk80]

maybe mr smart man is because water is essential to life????

I was responding to AV1611VET, who posits that God moved the water and debris from the earth and deposited it on Neptune.

Please, do try to follow along.

Of course, if you have an alternative explanation on why we do not see any evidence of a global flood, I'm all ears.

 

[verysincere]

Well God can't lie and that says all of the people were killed and it later says all the animals and plants were destroyed so unless the whole earth was flooded, it couldn't have happened

No. I was once where you are (as a young earth creationist.) I had a very difficult time over multiply decades in separating cherished TRADITIONS with what the Bible actually states. You may have to consult a solid Hebrew Bible commentary to see it, but Genesis makes NO claims of a global/planet-wide flood. (Hopefully by now you've seen my more detailed exposition of this which I posted this morning.)

But here's some additional relevant thoughts:

1) When Genesis that people from all the earth and every nation went to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph during the famine, did that "all" and "every" mean that people from Japan, South America, and Cuba journeyed to Egypt.

2) When the Acts of the Apostles tells us that men of every nation were in Jerusalem and heard Peter's Pentecost sermon, were citizens of China, Madagascar, and Fiji present?

One of the more foolish mantras which even the local seminary professors who sometimes preached at my childhood church used with embarrassing frequency was this: "When the Bible says ALL, you should believe it! ALL means ALL and that's ALL that ALL means!" Ridiculous. We don't observe such "rules" in our own English language and culture and you can bet that the ancient Hebrews and the Koine Greek writers of the New Testament didn't either.

So what does that do to our understanding of Genesis? We can LITERALLY interpret the text without falling into such errors. We can affirm that ALL OF ADAM'S IMAGO DEI LINEAGE WAS DESTROYED IN THE FLOOD (except those on the ark)---even though other Homo sapiens NOT of that description continued to live outside of the flood region.

Noah's world WAS destroyed! And the text only says that the ERETZ (the land) was flooded---not "planet earth" [of which they had no unique vocabulary word to describe.] Yes, Noah COULD have simply left the region if the purpose of the ark was ONLY to save him. But the Bible says it was a means of salvation from the coming judgement---and the New Testament refers to his testimony even while the ark was being prepared. Indeed, Christian theologians have long considered the ark a "type of Christ". Yes, God could have saved Noah and family using other methods----just as God could simply have forgiven mankind of its sins and avoided the cross of Jesus Christ. Similarly, the Ark was necessary because that was God's will for how he wished to carry out his salvation plan for Noah and family while the rest of the IMAGO DEI lineage of Adam was judged in a great flood which destroyed "everything under the sky" [i.e., the heavens.] All of the expressions/phrase which YOU assume mean "planet earth" were simply the Hebrew way of describing Noah's world, the ERETZ.

Indeed, even in the oft quoted Petrine passage about Noah's world, the writer chose the Greek word KOSMOS and not GE----because he was stressing that Noah's "world of people" was destroyed by the flood, not the "world of rocks and continents". Had PLANET EARTH been the extent of the flood, GE would have been the obvious choice. But it was NOAH'S WORLD that was destroyed in the flood.

I encourage you not to remain stuck in the mire of TRADITION like I was. It took me a very long time to push tradition aside and allow the Bible to speak for itself. And that is when I began to see many things, such as the myth of a global flood ----and fallacies like a 6,000 year old earth. Part of my blindness was my assumption that evidence from God's creation could be ignored----as if God's creation was a "mistaken revelation". I didn't understand that God provides abundant answers to our questions in BOTH his BIBLE and his CREATION. They tells us one story of billions of years of earth history and the wondrous evolutionary processes which God created! Praise God!

 

[verysincere]

Well, if you actually paid more attention to the Bible quotes you use and tried not to just pick them at random and claim they are relevant then you wouldn't have to answer awkward questions. It's your own fault.

Remember his favorite slogans: "Evidence can take a hike!" and "Reason can take a hike!" and even "The Hebrew Masoretic Text can take a hike!"

Sometimes blindness can be a deliberate choice, as the Book of Proverbs attests in describing the mocker who hates instruction.

 

[TheReasoner]

OR I’m right.

Then why does nothing in reality support your conclusion, Doveaman?

No it hasn’t.

Yes, it has. Geocentrism was once held to be the christian true and holy view. It fell. Then there was spontaneous genesis which some held to be true; If the conditions were right god would create animals and other life out of nothing.
That was also held by some to be the true christian position.

Rubbish.

No. Not rubbish. Check it out. Plenty of people supported such. Some still do, consider the KKK. Read on the exploits of missionaries in for example South America. Some of who worked natives till they died because they were considered inferior human beings who could only be saved through extreme toil.
I'm not joking. Wish I was.

More rubbish.

Really? What was it you said about dark matter? It's not real, and any observations of it were false. Of course you don't appear to know what the placeholder dark matter refers to at all, but that didn't stop you from casting judgement. Thus violating the ninth commandment.

Confirmation has no meaning in science. Theories are falsified all the time.

Not entirely true. We test hypothesis and theories to falsify them. Then, when that fails and the predictions fit what the result reveals we can say it is confirmed.

Any theory that contradicts God's inspired word (the Bible) is a denial of God's inspired truth.

And if it is consistently confirmed over 150+ years? Tested by hundreds of thousands across the globe? Employed in constructions and vast engineering undertakings which would fail without it's accuracy? Is it still a denial of god's inspired truth, or has that inspired truth been misinterpreted?

An understanding of creation, just like the Bible, requires interpretation. Sometimes we get them both wrong.

Which is why we employ the scientific method. My 'interpretations' are testable, falsifiable. And indeed they hold water. They are daily subjected to rigorous attempts at falsification. Yours... Well, you keep yours static in the face of any challenge whatsoever. Despite it not fitting the evidence you keep it. And fling dirt about those who think otherwise, or make observations that contradict you. What was it you said? "Blind lying scientists" or something to that effect, right?
But YOU, YOU cannot lie. YOU cannot be wrong. Oh no, not YOU.

Nope. I am simply denying your interpretation of creation just like you are denying my interpretation of the Bible.

 

[WisdomTree]

Remember his favorite slogans: "Evidence can take a hike!" and "Reason can take a hike!" and even "The Hebrew Masoretic Text can take a hike!"

Sometimes blindness can be a deliberate choice, as the Book of Proverbs attests in describing the mocker who hates instruction.

In his defence, going for a hike can be good for you health.

 

[Frenchfrye]

No. I was once where you are (as a young earth creationist.) I had a very difficult time over multiply decades in separating cherished TRADITIONS with what the Bible actually states. You may have to consult a solid Hebrew Bible commentary to see it, but Genesis makes NO claims of a global/planet-wide flood. (Hopefully by now you've seen my more detailed exposition of this which I posted this morning.)

But here's some additional relevant thoughts:

1) When Genesis that people from all the earth and every nation went to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph during the famine, did that "all" and "every" mean that people from Japan, South America, and Cuba journeyed to Egypt.

2) When the Acts of the Apostles tells us that men of every nation were in Jerusalem and heard Peter's Pentecost sermon, were citizens of China, Madagascar, and Fiji present?

One of the more foolish mantras which even the local seminary professors who sometimes preached at my childhood church used with embarrassing frequency was this: "When the Bible says ALL, you should believe it! ALL means ALL and that's ALL that ALL means!" Ridiculous. We don't observe such "rules" in our own English language and culture and you can bet that the ancient Hebrews and the Koine Greek writers of the New Testament didn't either.

So what does that do to our understanding of Genesis? We can LITERALLY interpret the text without falling into such errors. We can affirm that ALL OF ADAM'S IMAGO DEI LINEAGE WAS DESTROYED IN THE FLOOD (except those on the ark)---even though other Homo sapiens NOT of that description continued to live outside of the flood region.

Noah's world WAS destroyed! And the text only says that the ERETZ (the land) was flooded---not "planet earth" [of which they had no unique vocabulary word to describe.] Yes, Noah COULD have simply left the region if the purpose of the ark was ONLY to save him. But the Bible says it was a means of salvation from the coming judgement---and the New Testament refers to his testimony even while the ark was being prepared. Indeed, Christian theologians have long considered the ark a "type of Christ". Yes, God could have saved Noah and family using other methods----just as God could simply have forgiven mankind of its sins and avoided the cross of Jesus Christ. Similarly, the Ark was necessary because that was God's will for how he wished to carry out his salvation plan for Noah and family while the rest of the IMAGO DEI lineage of Adam was judged in a great flood which destroyed "everything under the sky" [i.e., the heavens.] All of the expressions/phrase which YOU assume mean "planet earth" were simply the Hebrew way of describing Noah's world, the ERETZ.

Indeed, even in the oft quoted Petrine passage about Noah's world, the writer chose the Greek word KOSMOS and not GE----because he was stressing that Noah's "world of people" was destroyed by the flood, not the "world of rocks and continents". Had PLANET EARTH been the extent of the flood, GE would have been the obvious choice. But it was NOAH'S WORLD that was destroyed in the flood.

I encourage you not to remain stuck in the mire of TRADITION like I was. It took me a very long time to push tradition aside and allow the Bible to speak for itself. And that is when I began to see many things, such as the myth of a global flood ----and fallacies like a 6,000 year old earth. Part of my blindness was my assumption that evidence from God's creation could be ignored----as if God's creation was a "mistaken revelation". I didn't understand that God provides abundant answers to our questions in BOTH his BIBLE and his CREATION. They tells us one story of billions of years of earth history and the wondrous evolutionary processes which God created! Praise God!

Ok one last question: why did God tell Noah to build an ark and put animals in it when him and these animals could have easily walked to somewhere the flood wouldn't have struck? he had 120 years to do that.

 

[TheReasoner]

Sometimes blindness can be a deliberate choice, as the Book of Proverbs attests in describing the mocker who hates instruction.

I guess "the bible can take a hike" is also apt paraphrase of AV's words? His actions sure do seem to indicate he thinks the ninth commandment, those proverbs, paul's words on trying all and keeping what's good, and so on and so forth do not apply to him.

 

[OllieFranz]

If the hypothesis contradicts the Bible, the hypothesis is denying God's inspired word, which is also a denial of the God who inspired the word.

A denial of my word is a denial of me. If my word is not true, then I am considered a liar. But if my word is true but is rejected, then I am being denied.

Any hypothesis that contradicts God's inspired word (the Bible) is a denial of God's inspired truth.

But if I say "The sky is blue." And you tell someone "Ollie said 'the sky is blue and the grass is red" and that person says "The grass is green, not red, and besides, Ollie did not say it was red," he is not calling me a liar. He is just telling you the obvious.

We do not deny the Bible, just your false claims about it. We don't even call you liars. We know you sincerely believe that the Bible teaches Special Creation and a global flood. We just think you are mistaken.

 

[OllieFranz]

If the hypothesis contradicts the Bible, the hypothesis is denying God's inspired word, which is also a denial of the God who inspired the word.

And I could say that if your hypothesis contradicts the evidence from Nature -- evidence that the Bible assures us teaches us about God and His plan for Mankind -- then you are denying the God who both inspired the Bible and created the natural world.

 

[verysincere]

Ok one last question: why did God tell Noah to build an ark and put animals in it when him and these animals could have easily walked to somewhere the flood wouldn't have struck? he had 120 years to do that.

I addressed that exact question under your post on another thread.

I could reply with countless other examples: Why did God have Joshua march the Children of Israel around Jericho day after day (and seven times on the last day) when God could have EASILY destroyed the walls of Jericho without them doing anything? Why did Jesus bother to make a muddy eye plaster to heal blindness when he could have simply said, "I command your blindness to be gone!"

Indeed, why bother with a messy flood for over a year when God could simply have given every unrepentent sinner on earth a stroke? Why was a flood necessary at all?

Are you starting to see the utter emptiness of that very traditional but tired argument? It is illogical and assumes that God is not the sovereign God who he is.

Surely you know enough that Christian theologians have long considered the Ark a TYPE OF CHRIST. The Ark was God's prescribed means for how the OBEDIENT and REPENTANT would escape the coming judgment. OF COURSE Noah could have escaped the flood by moving to another area---just as God could have chosen to do countless other things in the scriptures by some solution OTHER than the one that God chose. What an empty argument! (In any other context, wouldn't you denounce anyone who questioned God's will for how he wished to deal with some situation. Why did Jesus chose to heal on blind man in multiple steps where step #1 only allowed the man to see fuzzy images of people? Why didn't Jesus heal immediately? Why did he require that some people had to do simply things in response and BY FAITH before they were healed? Kind of sounds like Noah having to obey and spend years building an ark, right?)

Tell me: Are you starting to see just how empty and unbiblical tradition-bound, human-based thinking about the Bible can be? Because I share much of your thinking in my own bankground, I am very interested in your opinions. [And by the way, you may also be interested in the general Q&A forum I opened on a thread about my upcoming department from this forum as I continue with other projects. You may want to participate in the discussion there.]

 

[OllieFranz]

Last time I checked, marine life could swim. Although some might have been trapped on land as the waters receded. If the flood really happened, we might even see whale fossils in the dessert.

But that much fresh water would have diluted the the ocean so much that the whales would not have enough buoyancy to reach the surface -- and they need air to breathe. And most salt water fish can't live in fresh or brackish (half-salty) water, nor can most fresh water fish live in salty water.

Most shellfish and other invertebrate sea life need the tidal activity of shallow water to oxygenate the water and flush away their waste.

If the whole earth was covered to 25 feet higher than Mt Everest, as is often claimed, for more than seven months, there would not be much sea life left.

 

[OllieFranz]

7 So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the land [eretz] the man [Adam] I have created—and with him the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made him.”
(alternate translation added in red)

He is not talking about all mankind (the descendents of the male and female H'adam created in Genesis 1). He is talking about the specific Adam whom He placed in the garden He created in the east of the land of Eden (and through him, his descendents). Nor is He talking about wiping out the whole Planet Earth, but just the land of Eden (including, among other places the garden and the city of Nod).

 

[OllieFranz]

Ok one last question: why did God tell Noah to build an ark and put animals in it when him and these animals could have easily walked to somewhere the flood wouldn't have struck? he had 120 years to do that.

1) as a witness to his neighbors, to give them the opportunity to repent. Compare with Jonah, where God told him to preach in the pagan city of Ninevah. The message was repent or face destruction. The citizens repented and were spared.

2) as an example to future generations. Like Jonah in the whale, Noah in the Ark became a living metaphor for God's grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

 

[verysincere]

If the whole earth was covered to 25 feet higher than Mt Everest, as is often claimed, ....

And even that tradition is based on a much dispute ambiguity in the Hebrew text of Genesis. If I were to post the actual Hebrew words in an interlinear format, everyone could see that simply introducing a modern-day comma [something obviously not available to the original author] would communicate an entirely different sense:

"covered to 25 feet, higher than the highest hill in the area"

Traditionalists forget that the language is that of the time and culture and the perspective of the human observer. The ERETZ ("land", not "planet earth") was the world that Noah knew and what he could observer was that which was visible to the horizon.

Moreover, the word traditionally translated "mountain" is translated "hill" in other contexts----because the Hebrew word referred to both. So we make a distinction in English that is not evidence in the Hebrew word. Indeed, a number of simple substitutions in the English Bible text can better render the sense of the Hebrew original:

Replace "mountains" with "hills".
Replace "everything under heaven" with "the sky".
Replace "earth" with "land" [Because ERETZ means both, both people tend to misunderstand "earth" as "Planet earth" rather than "the ground", "the soil", "the land under one's feet".]


The traditional translation wording is not so much wrong as it was generally misleading to people prone to misunderstanding it. Only in recent times have people assumed "earth" means "planet earth". Indeed, in more agrarian times, people's first thought about "earth" is what they had to till when planting crops. Translators must always be attuned to such problems.

 

[verysincere]

Ok one last question: .......

Frenchfrye, I sincerely hope I have addressed all of your questions. Do you feel that you have a better understanding now of why so many of us left young earth creationism even though we adamantly affirm the Bible and all that it teaches?

I know from my own experience that these kinds of challenges to cherished traditions can be very unsettling, especially the first time I heard them. (Unfortunately, back in my younger years the Internet was over a half century away and I had few opportunities to interact with people who understood Hebrew exegesis and who had even given much thought to how The Theory of Evolution and Genesis are in harmony. So my trek to God's truth was a slow one. I had been taught to respect God's Bible but NOT the evidence in God's creation. Nobody told me that we can trust God's answers in BOTH.)

I should also mention that another factor that led me to my present position was the realization that the deity of my young earth creationist traditions was a weak and limited one who was more like a fallible human engineer who had to monitor, tweak, and repair his creations. I eventually came to realize that God designed the universe so marvelously that his laws of physics and chemistry brought about the evolutionary processes and billions of years of earth history which brought about his will for the adaptations and diversity of life we observe in creation. Praise God! I far prefer the God of the Bible to the very limited deity of "special creation" who I once imagined.