You do realize that odds are pretty much against you being able to debate this topic now. You’re supposed to ask a fairly innocent sounding version of this question and wait for your victim, uh I mean the creationist to post. Then get 'em.:eek:
I was raised hard-core Southern Baptist and what I remember the most about Sunday School was how often I got in trouble for asking questions. I can reference Bible stories by what kind of punishment or scolding I got. No snacktime=Noah’s Ark,why didn’t the animals eat Noah? Memorize extra Bible verses and write them over and over=What did he make the world out of? Call to have my mom “talk” to me=what if a dinosaur ate the apple? Later I was told I would never question God if I loved him. I am now pre-conditioned to agree with everyone and if I don’t, I expect them to look at me sadly and just pray for me. I did get an award for memorizing the most Bible verses. Yaah Hoo. I’ll just slip quietly out now. Just don’t under-estimate the power of negative conditioning. Be nice.
I wasn’t curious, I was "willfully dis-obedient according to the church. My parents didn’t go there and didn’t really know anything more than I talked too much. I never told them. I lived. The only reason I thought of it lately is I recently decided I wasn’t going to be a Christian anymore, because there is too much doctrine that wasn’t my own belief, just the conditioned one. Dumping a life-long religion is not as easy as I thought. No snack time for me.
At least they interpreted what you did in a way so that it will punishable. :rolleyes:
As for leaving christianity, good luck! I have yet to find anything better than not having a religion at all (note to self: search for threads asking wether atheism is a religion not), but I can imagine it’s not easy
To elaborate a little: examining type of sediment, fossils, etc. that make up a particular layer of rock strata can tell us a great deal about the environment that existed when that layer was at the surface. It could have been sea floor, desert, or freshwater lake, even if it’s now tilted at an angle halfway up the side of a mountain. The species of fossils will all be consistent with that type of environment, and you won’t find species that were already extinct or which have not yet evolved (but you will find them in strata beneath and above, respectively). The distribution of fossils within the strata forms a patter which mirrors the course of evolution.
You also get layers of strata which alternate between sedimentary and igneous rock. Mud from the Noachian Flood could not have penetrated the igneous layers, so the environments represented by the lower sedimentary layers must have existed prior to being wiped out by the lava flows.
Question: How do creationists explain the fossilization process?
Are there any other countries besides the USA where creationism is even given attention ? Every country probably has a few hardcore creationists… but they are so few and given zero attention… only in the US do they try to take evolution off the curriculum ?
They don’t. I accepted my church’s explanation for years, which was vague. When I looked into it more, I did a search that included evolution and the Bible, I think, and read all sorts of information about why evolution hadn’t been proven. Christian websites explain it all very logically or so I thought. A few weeks later I joined SDMB and that was one of my first questions, which I phrased in an unfortunate way; indicating that I really didn’t see how they could consider evolution a proven fact. Even more unfortunate is that I asked it in GD. Two hours later I had my first 10 replies and in the next few weeks a 100+!!! more. Ouch! Learning can still be hard, but at least they didn’t make me write Bible verses over and over.
jatfield, I don’t think the atheists will let me into their “religion”. I still believe in God and that’s kind of a deal breaker for membership.
zev_steinhardt
There are several concerns I have with the ideas you represent regarding the 6 days being equal to 6 long periods as a means to reconcile a creationist viewpoint with a naturalist viewpoint. My concerns are not from a scientific pov since a divine influence on evolution, if applied gradually enough, would look the same as a naturalistic process and therefore not measurable by science, which makes the concerns either philosophical or metaphysical.
Why would God be determined to use methods that for all intents and purposes look the same as a natural process?
If God did choose to use natural processes so he could have a set of worshippers, isn’t 14,000,000,000 years a long time to wait?
Why would god use epochs and epochs of populations, extinctions, and catycalismic events to get to the creatures he wants to get to, rather than creating his “target” species outright?
If a natural process would have taken over 14,000,000,000 years (from big bang to now) to get one species with a modicum of control over its environment, how “long did it take” before God had the power to make an entire universe? (Yes, I know that outside our universe, and at some locations within, time has no meaning. I also know that evolution, both cosmic, and biological are not aiming at any target.)
These are some of the same concerns I have with Christian theistic evolution, with sounds similiar to what you said.
I dunno. Why does He use gravity when it seems perfectly natural? Why does He allow radioactive elements to decay in a way that looks the same as a natural process? Why does He allow the plants to create their own food using photosynthesis in a way that looks the same as a natural process? In short, God chose His methods for reasons that are unknown to me. He did not consult me in creation.
**
Well, from the Jewish POV, man was the purpose of creation. I suppose if He wanted to, He could have created the world in one instant, instead of doing it in six days, 14 billion years or any other time frame. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned that good things are worth waiting for?
**
Again, I don’t claim to have the answers. I was simply putting it out there as a possible “how” not a “why.”
**
I’m not sure I understand your question. Could you please re-state it.
**
Good. I’d worry about someone who didn’t have any concerns and took what I said as absolute truth.
Zev, you’re starting to confuse some of us as to what you do and do not contend is the most likely scenario. Can you do this for us? Pick any time between 500 million and 100 thousand years ago and describe what conditions on Earth were like, i.e. which types of creatures were present and which were absent.
I’m not claiming to have the knowledge of what actually happened. All I stated was that one can be a creationist and still believe that the Big Bang occured and that animals evolved to their present states.
I’m perfectly willing to entertain the notion that the environment on earth 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretacous was as science currently explains it to be. I just think that people in this thread are presenting Creationists/Evolutionists as a false dichotimy. One need not be exclusively one or the other.
A problem for many US dopers is that their only encounters with creationists are usually fundamentalist Christians who although they may know their Bible, they know squat about science. Even if you are a literal six-day creationist you have to know a lot of science (even if you think it is wrong) in order to convince others.
As a Catholic, again, our only formal restrictions in beleiving in evolutionism are that a) whereas the body may have evolved the soul didn’t, it was put in by God and b) whatever the process, it was God who decided it, even it it was random evolution (which, BTW, I don’t entirely buy).
Going back to extinction. If the question is why God allowed extinction to happen and the whole time thing, well time is always in Present for Him, and 1400000000000000 years is for Him as a second. Why extinction and no the other way around? I really don’t care much (in the religious sense), it is like wondering why blue goes after green it the rainbow ( you may say "it is the wavelength, but still …why the wavelength).
Only the hardest-headed person would beleive in 100% inmutability for species, because we “make” new forms of, say, dogs all the time. Most creationist who know their science accept MICROevolution .
As to MACRO evolution, I’m still waiting for my transitional fossils in small steps and the clear-cut changes from fossil A to similar Fossil B.
it sounds like you believe in theistic evolution (that is evolution happened in just the way science says, but God drove it) not Young Earth Creationism. The dichotomy is between YEC and evolution, not between theistic and non-theistic evolution. I’ve never understood why YECs trust the people who wrote the Bible more than the God who put the fossils in the rocks.
The concern I have is that if God only used naturalistic processes, in what way are we to know that a god actually used those processes at all, and that they are not, in fact purely naturalistic process running with naturalistic causes?
I didn’t mean to imply that you made that implication.
It is a poorly worded first-cause type question, how did God come to be? Which is not the intention of the OP, but so much effort by creationists is placed on the insisting that God created the dinosaurs/animals/etc. because it is unbelievable that those things could appear from “nothing” without postulating the origins of god.
That is certainly a valid question. To me, however, it matters little. To me, a creation with a Big Bang or a creation 6000 years ago are equally miraculous.
**
Thanks for the clairification. I’m afraid, however, that that is another question that I cannot answer. Nor do I believe it is answerable at all; simply because part of the Jewish belief is that when God created the universe, He created time as well. There is no such thing as “before Creation” in the strict sense simply because you cannot have have something before the genesis of time anymore than you can have something that is two feet west of the edge of defined space. So, in short, there was no beginning to God, because a beginning implies time, which did not exist. That’s Judaism’s take on the matter. YMMV.
The only reason I thought of it lately is I recently decided I wasn’t going to be a Christian anymore, because there is too much doctrine that wasn’t my own belief, just the conditioned one. Dumping a life-long religion is not as easy as I thought. No snack time for me.