What makes Creationism so hard to believe in, and evolution so easy?

[rockytriton]

It was just a story, there are tons of things about it that couldn't possibly have happened, especially the part about 2 of EVERY animal on earth on one big boat.

[Buffy]

A worldwide flood in the somewhat recent past (within 4000 years from now) could not possibly have happened.

At any time in the past. ask yourself the question: Where'd all the water come from to raise sea level on the order of SEVERAL MILES? And then where'd it go? Of course if you believe that God can perform miracles of any kind I guess that takes care of it, but there sure isn't any evidence of it.

 

OTOH, I actually do believe the Russian theory that at one time the Bosporus was plugged up and the Black Sea was a below sea level valley and the dam broke and water rushed in. There appears to be some satellite evidence of this showing settlements and tracks to places well below the current shoreline of the Black Sea. The theory has numerous problems, but none has ruled it out completely, and it would have occurred 8000 to 10000 years ago, thus predating historical records, but well within a time frame that it would have become part of the mythology of just about every early civilization....

 

Something to think about....

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[Stargazer]

At any time in the past. ask yourself the question: Where'd all the water come from to raise sea level on the order of SEVERAL MILES? And then where'd it go?

I was ignoring that little problem to focus on the fact that a worldwide flood would have interrupted several ancient cultures, and somehow restarting them after the flood.

 

But obviously there are plenty of problems with the flood story. It makes for decent fantasy I suppose, but as an account of what really happened? That's possible only if you chose to close your eyes to common sense.

 

Of course if you believe that God can perform miracles of any kind I guess that takes care of it, but there sure isn't any evidence of it.

That's one reason I find it to be so ridiculous. I mean, we can't explain it, oh well, god did it. Or, something impossible happened, well it's possible for god! It's like a swiss army knife, only the swiss army knife can come in handy in real life.

 

OTOH, I actually do believe the Russian theory that at one time the Bosporus was plugged up and the Black Sea was a below sea level valley and the dam broke and water rushed in. There appears to be some satellite evidence of this showing settlements and tracks to places well below the current shoreline of the Black Sea. The theory has numerous problems, but none has ruled it out completely, and it would have occurred 8000 to 10000 years ago, thus predating historical records, but well within a time frame that it would have become part of the mythology of just about every early civilization....

 

Something to think about....

I know absolutely nothing about that particular theory, or idea. I should probably look it up.

[MortenS]

Several places to start reading about the Bosporus flood...

 

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040809/pf/430718a_pf.html

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues00/apr00/phenom_apr00.html

 

Of course, creation "scientists" does not accept this as THE Flood: http://www.icr.org/pubs/btg-b/btg-134b.htm.

 

Personally, I think local or regional floods are the source of many of the flood myths in various cultures.

[paultrr]

One thing that can be done rather simply and this backs up Buffy a bit and others is take the highest mountain we have today and figure out how many inches of rain per hour on an average it would take over say 40 days time to put it under water. Then rethink the question of where all that water went. The global flood story out of the Bible is local tribal myth based upon perhaps local flood stories handed down. There simply is no evidence for a worldwide flood. There have been perhaps down through history local floods. Even today we have local floods. At the end of the last ice age I would suspect there where many local floods across the globe that could have spawned the old stories.

[niviene]

Ok..back to the subject of the Bible being fact or fiction in it's stories of history.

 

Based on the readings in Exodus about the story of the Jew's exiting out of Egypt into the "promised land", and the events that took place. do you think it's fact or fiction? what do you think is fact, and what fictional?

 

 

Sounds like a new thread to me... :)

[niviene]

At any time in the past. ask yourself the question: Where'd all the water come from to raise sea level on the order of SEVERAL MILES? And then where'd it go? Of course if you believe that God can perform miracles of any kind I guess that takes care of it, but there sure isn't any evidence of it.

 

OTOH, I actually do believe the Russian theory that at one time the Bosporus was plugged up and the Black Sea was a below sea level valley and the dam broke and water rushed in. There appears to be some satellite evidence of this showing settlements and tracks to places well below the current shoreline of the Black Sea. The theory has numerous problems, but none has ruled it out completely, and it would have occurred 8000 to 10000 years ago, thus predating historical records, but well within a time frame that it would have become part of the mythology of just about every early civilization....

 

Wow... I consider myself a person who rides the fence on religious matters, and I don't know why I never thought of this. I guess it becomes one of those issues that I just try to ignore to see if I can accept Christianity or not... obviously I've never made it to believing, or I wouldn't call myself a fence rider. I have studied so much history, and it never occurred to me the time frame of that flood and the effect it would have had on those histories I was studying. Then again, with other factors like the Black Sea, that could have been a factor in creating a growing legend (what I have come to believe many of the stories are) that started out with some guy saving a couple goats from his little farm by putting them on a little boat and sailing toward some drier land...

[Biochemist]

Wow... I consider myself a person who rides the fence on religious matters, and I don't know why I never thought of this. I guess it becomes one of those issues that I just try to ignore to see if I can accept Christianity or not...

Personally, I don't think you should ignore any facts when evaluating Christianity. You can ignore some opinions, however. Recognizing the difference is the challenge.

[lindagarrette]

One thing that can be done rather simply and this backs up Buffy a bit and others is take the highest mountain we have today and figure out how many inches of rain per hour on an average it would take over say 40 days time to put it under water. Then rethink the question of where all that water went. The global flood story out of the Bible is local tribal myth based upon perhaps local flood stories handed down. There simply is no evidence for a worldwide flood.

Why should anyone even bother to look for scientific evidence of Biblical stories? By definition they happened with devine intervention so no other explanation is needed. Miracles are by definition physical impossibilities. It's silly to tri fitting them into a scientific framework. Why would a god do something impossible and then fool people into thinking it happened naturally? defeating the purpose of faith.

[Stargazer]

Why should anyone even bother to look for scientific evidence of Biblical stories? By definition they happened with devine intervention so no other explanation is needed. Miracles are by definition physical impossibilities. It's silly to tri fitting them into a scientific framework. Why would a god do something impossible and then fool people into thinking it happened naturally? defeating the purpose of faith.

Absolutely. All we can do is to point out the impossibilities and improbabilities in some of the stories, but mostly it wont matter, simply because if they have decided that something is true, my guess is that very few would change their minds. However, if something turns out to be possible, they celebrate it because then science suddenly "enforced" their faith or something similar. When science tells them their myths are wrong in most cases, it's because "science can't see god". How about them making up their minds? Can science enforce faith in ancient fictional myths, or can it not?

[bumab]

Why should anyone even bother to look for scientific evidence of Biblical stories?

 

Ah, an open mind.

 

By definition they happened with devine intervention so no other explanation is needed. Miracles are by definition physical impossibilities. It's silly to tri fitting them into a scientific framework. Why would a god do something impossible and then fool people into thinking it happened naturally? defeating the purpose of faith.

 

Not all Biblical stories are about miracles. In fact, there are relativally few miracle stories in the bible, outside of the Gosples, compared to the historically verifiable things- rulers, nations, borders, wars, etc.

 

Also, natural occurances could have been attributed to miracles in a very natural way. Noah's flood could have been taken from a huge regional flood in the Tigress Valley, which has been historically verified. Was it the whole world, by our understanding of "whole world?" No. Was it the "whole world" in a figurative sense to the people living there at the time? Yes, or it could have been. So figurativally, some miracles could be natural occurances.

 

Also, to many ancient cultures, miralces were all around, all the time. When you see the world as a gift from God, even "natural" events can be seen as miracles. Miracles are as much a point of view as they are a supernatural occurance, many times. Don't let your worldview color your reading of an ancient text written under a very different worldview. You can't judge ancient folk by current standards, it doesn't make sense.

 

If there was a true miracle, of course you couldn't find a natural explanation. But I have a feeling that somebody would try, and come up with a theory, that explained it anyhow...

[Smokinjoe9]

I don't recall EVER, running into a single passage in the Bible that indicates that the Earth could have even POSSABLY been older than Adam/ and Eve's time on Earth.

Then you have misread the Bible. It states right in the beginning, void, water, land, plants, animals etc...It does not say all at once but in order..

 

The Bible NEVER states that the creation process of the Earth could have even POSSABLY taken more than 6 days...The Bible never gives any indication that the Earth could have taken an unlimited amount of time to become the Earth.

You must have missed it..You must not be reading the WHOLE Bible..God states(or God through someone), basically the whole thing was completed in 6 days. It does not state it was created in days created by the sun and moon. The 24hr period is not a day to God only to man..The Bible specifically states, a day to God can be an indefinite period, e.g. 1000yrs, 10,000yrs, and the 24hr day was created for man, by God...The 24hr day was created for many reason, toiling, sleeping, keeping time, but does not refer to God's time table. If you would like references I would be happy to supply them.

[Smokinjoe9]

I just want to add, I am not a creationalist, or an evolutionalist, I also do not sway towards religion or science. I am simply a person who is interested in exploring ALL the venues put out to study. I do however believe beit science or religion a person should always keep an open mind no matter how rediculous it may seem to you. Remember, we use to worship the Sun, think the world was flat, some still worship cows, hehe, cows, I love it...

[Biochemist]

Then you have misread the Bible. It states right in the beginning, void, water, land, plants, animals etc...It does not say all at once but in order..

At the risk of opening a can of worms, I would like to offer a couple of hermeneutical (i.e., interpretive) principles that are applicable to Genesis 1. I, frankly, have only general impressions of what the details of Genesis 1 mean. But it is normal in conservative cirlces to allow for idioms, poetry, metaphor and phenomenal language (etc) in normal usage of ancient Hebrew. The problem is, we don't know most of these elements well for ancient Hebrew.

 

By way of example, in contemporary English, "day" only occasionally means 24 hours. It usually does not mean 24 hours. As examples:

 

 

 

1. "well, at the end of the day our conclusions will be that...."
   
2. "I may well regret this one day"
   
3. "This would have never happened in my day"
   
4. "We do this work day in, day out"
   
5. "This has been a really great day"
   
6. 'It seems we are living in the day of the individualist"
   

The word "day" in contemporary English can mean a period of history (items 3 and 6), an indeterminate point in time (Items 1 and 2), a metaphorical sequence (item 4) or a period of less than 24 hours (Item 5). I am sure we could think of many other variants as well. Oddly, perhaps, all of the above usages are readily understood in context.

 

It would be unreasonable to expect that a word like "day" was used in exactly one way in Hebrew. But whatever was intended in the original text, it was reasonable for the translators to use the word "day" in English, because the word in English is nicely vague as well.

 

There are a lot more difficulties with Genesis 1 than the word "day" that are a least as difficult to figure out. However, the most salient elements of Genesis 1 are probably the most meaningful: that God created the world and that God created man. The mechanism described in Genesis I is very problematic to interpret, even for those who believe the Bible is the inspired word of God.

[Smokinjoe9]

By way of example, in contemporary English, "day" only occasionally means 24 hours. It usually does not mean 24 hours. As examples:

 

 

 

1. "well, at the end of the day our conclusions will be that...."
   
2. "I may well regret this one day"
   
3. "This would have never happened in my day"
   
4. "We do this work day in, day out"
   
5. "This has been a really great day"
   
6. 'It seems we are living in the day of the individualist"
   

The word "day" in contemporary English can mean a period of history (items 3 and 6), an indeterminate point in time (Items 1 and 2), a metaphorical sequence (item 4) or a period of less than 24 hours (Item 5). I am sure we could think of many other variants as well. Oddly, perhaps, all of the above usages are readily understood in context.

 

I can understand the use of the word "day" as being vague. Although, it is put into context when used in conjuction with the sun and the moon, also including the usage for a time table for man. Remember, God said "let there be light" even before there was a sun or moon...

[paultrr]

Then you have misread the Bible. It states right in the beginning, void, water, land, plants, animals etc...It does not say all at once but in order...

 

Actually, even on the order of creation there is no solid agreement between chapter 1 and chapter 2 either. The Creative order in both chapters is a bit different. The normal literalists answer to this is chapter two is simply a restatement of some of the work done and recorded in chapter 1. However, that simply skips around answering why the different chronologies are there and logically it would seem that even with chapter 2 going into the account of Eve's creation or formation from Adam's rib that the rest of the order should have been exactly the same. Don't buy my word on this read the two chapters and write down the order of creation to see yourself what it says. Rather begs the question which earth are we on since the accounts do not match up or that as the liberals have been saying all along these two accounts where written at different times by different authors.

 

Also the Hebrew word translated as day,"Yom" actually in itself does denote an exapnse of time. However, in chapter 1 after the creation of the Sun and Moon and stars, by rights the term day does tend to denote something akin to a regular day whatever the length of such was then because its now qualified as day being marked by the Sun and night by the moon and stars. And Adam and Eve in chapter 1 where the last creation, not anywhere near the first.

 

The 7000 or actually, 6000 year old earth estimate comes up by Usher who tried to date creation via the accounts of the linage from Adam onward. Two problems exist with this:

 

1.) There is no mention in the Bible how long Adam and Eve where in Eden before the fall.

 

2.) The chronology has known and accepted gaps in it even recognized by literalists fundamentalists like Creation Science Research.

 

Last current young earth articles I've seen tend to support an earth far older than 6000 years now. Basically the Usher date is now no longer an accepted one even for the majority that hold to the Bible.

[Buffy]

Why should anyone even bother to look for scientific evidence of Biblical stories? By definition they happened with devine intervention so no other explanation is needed.

I think it depends on which ones you're lookin' at. Some of us just think of the Bible as a very interesting source of historical novel. "History" is really a fairly modern invention, so just about every written document going way back has to be interpreted and investigated in order to weed out the myth from the truth. This goes for not just the Bible but all documents. The thing I love most about Biblical archeology is how often it seems to show strong indications that certain things happened due to natural rather than mystical causes. Do you have any idea how common pillars of salt are in the area around the Dead Sea (which is salt water)? There's zillions of em...

 

Cheers,

Buffy