My 6 year old son gets differing information about evolution and creationism depending on what videotape he jams into the VCR. This irritates him and leads him to ask many difficult questions, especially about dinosaurs. I have tried, “There are two different ideas about this, and here’s how they work…”
He just wants to know, which one is right. It bothers me to see him so frustrated, and I do not want to shoot down the Creation thing and all the morals and values that go with Christianity. And I don’t want my kid going head to head with his authority figures in school about this either.
Well, you could tell him that evolution is a scientific theory(which means that it is the best possible answer given all the evidence) that has been refined over the years as new evidence has rolled in, and that creationism is a religious doctrine based on someone’s interpretation of the Old Testament of certain versions of the Bible.
This probably belongs in the GREAT DEBATES forum, since it doesn’t really tie to a specific Mailbag item… and you might try looking at some of the discussions there.
I’ve reconciled science with religion, for myself, by noting that the Old Testament version of Creation is meant as poetry, not as literal science. I have no problem thinking that “Let there be light!” is a poetic expression of the Big Bang. I have no problem thinking that the pattern of creation – stars and planets, then earth, then continents, then plant life, then animal life, then human kind – is a poetic expression for evolution. And I have no problem with thinking that divinely-directed evolution is not incompatible with a Creator. It just didn’t happen in one afternoon, that’s all.
IMHO, the people who are wrong are the people who try to set up the Bible and Science as incompatible. They are the people who take every word in the Bible literally, rather than poetically. But the Bible isn’t a medical text (I’d certainly hate to have to undergo some of the biblical cures rather than use antibiotics), nor a physics text, nor a biology text. It wouldn’t make it as a legal guide today, either (guilt or innocence of an adulterer is determined by swallowing a concoction, and if you puke it up, you’re guilty). We don’t have divinely-appointed kings anymore, either.
You probably don’t have a problem reconciling these differences for yourself or for your child. So why set up the artificial barrier that says that God couldn’t have used evolution as a tool and process for creation? Seems to me that creationists limit God, by arguing that He couldn’t work in so marvellous a manner.
OK, now this thread should be moved to MPSIMS, too. I’ll just leave it here.
There is also an old Indian story that God molded creatures out of clay. When he got shapes he liked, he baked them. When he developed a creature he liked best, he gave that creature a soul. If you think that people have souls and animals don’t, this story encompasses both evolution (molding from clay) and creation (God bestowing souls).
Like Dex said, this probably is better suited for Great Debates (if you ask him nicely, he might move it for you ). But anyway:
Creationism has nothing to do with Christian morals or values (I won’t even get into the subject of having morals and values without Christianity). Creationism is about ignoring science in favor of a literal reading of the Bible. There are many, many people (including a number around here) who are what you would think of as “good Christians” and who accept evolution without it interfering at all with their morals or values.
Why would God create the world/universe in such a way that it would appear to be much older then it is? Why can we find fossils that are dated to be older then creationist claim that the earth exists?
I thought I could answer this by an assumption that a day for God is not the same as for us (actually i think the Bible states something like a day to God is like a 1000 yrs to man…). One little problem with that theory, some items are out of order like God created flowering plants before animals, which to science (and common sense) is the other way around.
Anyone up for the theory that God doesn’t experence time like man. Is time for God just another dimention that He can move through like we move through our X,Y,Z space?
My problem with the theory of evolution is that it has never provided any proof of one phylum or species springing off into another. And worse, it has come to justify some of the most abhorrent institutions to ever come about in human history. Nazism, facism, eugenics, each of these damnable systems owe their existence to the theory of evolution. Even Charles Darwin began to question abandon his theories when he came to learn of its applications.
I’m walking a thin line here. If this degenerates into yet another discussion of evolution vs creationism (despite the thread title), it gets moved to GREAT DEBATES forum.
I’d like to keep this to “What do you tell a child who is confused by the two seemingly conflicting explanations?” … that’s different from “What is truth?”
So, please, let’s NOT go off on the strand that capacitor has started. This is a topic on how to reconcile, not the problems with one or t’other. Yes, sure, one way to reconcile is to say “A is right and B is wrong.” I don’t think that’s what the OP is looking for, though.
I guess I should move it to IMHO, then. However, for dislike of moving topics unnecessarily, I’ll let it stay here.
OK, so Dex doesn’t have to go through the horror of moving a thread, I replied to Capacitor’s ridiculous comments in Great Debates. You can find the thread at the link below, and I hope Capacitor will go over there and defend his statements (or, rather, admit they were totally wrong).
I won’t address capacitor’s points: Suffice to say that such proof does, in fact, exist, and I trust that David B has provided some of it in the other thread. As to reconciling Creationism and Evolution, many folks (read: fundies) will tell you that the theory of evolution tries to obviate the need for God. My stance is that evolution is a tool: The existance of a potter’s wheel does not imply that there is no need for a potter. If anything, it implies the reverse: A potter uses the wheel to mold clay. Similarly, I see nothing inconsistent in saying that God used the tool of evolution to create the vast assortment of species on Earth.
I’m with you, Chronos. In fact, I think that a Creator-God who didn’t just go, “Poof! Presto!” and create all species, but who dreamed up something as complex as evolution, with all its branches and potential, and with all the ability for human beings to dwell within (and control) that framework… wow! That’s a God that far transcends the most powerful god of the wildest imagination of the ancients!
In the bible book of genesis it says that god created the world in six days. Then he created animals and man. 6 days to god could have been millions of years to us, because the bible doesn’t specifically say how long the days were. If the days were millions of years and god decided to create the dinosaurs early, then it is possible that they did roam the earth at one time. Also, look at the human population at the time of the beginning. It was minimal, and was centered in what is now the middle east. So, again, it is still possible that dinosaurs roamed the earth while humans were around. With the human population so minimal, they probably hardly ever came into contact, very few dinosaur fossils have been found in the middle east. Most of them were in europe and north/south america. Some were in the middle east, but again i say few.
My best advice to you would to be let the kid weigh the evidence for both sides equally, but you may want to help him along seeing that evolution and creationism are both hard to prove and are mainly personal opinions.
It appears that you do not have an appreciation for the vast amount of time elapsed between the disappearance of the dinosaurs (except for a few descendants that are still around tody) and the apppearance of modern Man.
The great dinosaur extinction was about 65 million years ago. The first hominids, far from being modern man or even Neanderthal man, appeared about 4.4 million years ago. Homo sapiens sapiens (that is, us) appeared about 0.12 million years ago (and not in the Middle East until later).
To try to illustrate this, imagine that we compress time so the dinosaurs died out at around the same time that we invented writing (around 6,000 years ago). On that time scale, we first appeared eleven years ago. I hope you can see that there is a vast difference there. If something first appeared eleven years ago, and there is plenty of evidence of it after that time, and there is no evidence for it before that time, and there is no reason to believe that ever was any evidence for it before that time, and there is plenty of evidence that it could not have existed before that time, it’s pretty ludicrous to suggest that maybe it was around 6,000 years ago. Your suggestion is the same.
Theres a problem with that verse in Genesis. I was just reading it yesterday, an dit says that God created animals on the fifth day(i think). Then he created man. THEN, man needed a partner, so God made the animals and brought them to man to see if he wanted any of them for a partner(heh).
When none were satisfactory(thank God) He created woman.
Okay: these 2 verses contradict each other!
Or is my Bible defective?
What you found is evidence that Genesis is not a single work written as a whole, but rather a synthesis of several different myths. These stories did not always fit together seemlessly or even logically, and thus produce inconsistencies such as the one you found. There are others that have been pointed out numerous times.
Thank you. But I am not a Bible scholar or anything like it. I just read it and enjoy Jesus’ wisdom.
But I’m sure any of you informed gents can give me a good example of an even bigger contradiction?
I’m sure its been done before, but I was busy washing my hair and didn’t read it.
). But anyway: