# If your a christian answer this **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 3, 2004, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277 "2004-03-03T08:53:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Renob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8c91f0/32.png) [@Renob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Renob)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2004, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/21 "2004-03-03T18:00:53Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > I think this rather underestimates the process by which current scientific understanding came about; 100 years ago (or more, probably), what was considered ‘true’ was not ascertained by objective, self-correcting processes; of course nobody can predict the future, but current understanding of the nature of things is based on such a weight of inter-related observation and data, that the kind of discovery needed to overturn it would be like discovering that there were elephants living in your bedroom that you just never happened to notice before. Perhaps so; I’m not very scientifically inclined, history is more my bag. However, I’m still very skeptical of accepting current scientific understanding as the final word (or close to the final word, as you seem to be saying) in any area. If you look throughout history, every era felt their “current understanding of the nature of things” was very advanced and was close to the true way of looking at things. And while I do not doubt that our current understanding is very advanced, I’m also pretty sure that there will be another Newton or Einstein to come along and fundamentally alter our way of thinking about the universe. As Shakespeare once wrote, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” This quote recognizes what to me is a fundamental truth: Man’s knowledge, no matter how advanced, is still quite limited. ---
**Author:** ![afterhourz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ba8739/32.png) [@afterhourz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/afterhourz)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2004, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/22 "2004-03-03T18:05:11Z")
> [@](#): > > If your an atheist then this question really isn’t for you because I’m assuming that God created the universe. The question is do you think God used evolution to create the universe or did he create it in 6 days? > I personally tend to believe 6 days because we are talking about God here not some 20 man construction crew. This reasoning is fallacious. The Bible says a day to God is like a thousand years and a thousand years are but a day. Six days or 15 billion years, from God’s perspective the time is not the same as yours so how can you leigitimately apply your concept of time to God? Besides, any creation of the universe longer than instantaneous was not necessary under the Christian framework. Why six days rather than no days? Why 15 billion rather than 1 billion? Who cares. The scientific evidence dictates the answer, not the Genesis myth. I suggest reading Ken Miller’s (a Christian) \*Finding Darwin’s God \* for a great book on evolution and theism. Vinni Vinnie ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Ashtar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ea924/32.png) [@Lord\_Ashtar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Ashtar)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2004, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/23 "2004-03-03T19:16:17Z")
> [@Antiochus](#): > > How many times are we going to do this question? As many times as is necessary. ---
**Author:** ![IWLN](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b5ac83/32.png) [@IWLN](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IWLN)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2004, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/24 "2004-03-03T21:44:37Z")
> [@Faucet](#): > > If your an atheist then this question really isn’t for you because I’m assuming that God created the universe. The question is do you think God used evolution to create the universe or did he create it in 6 days? > I personally tend to believe 6 days because we are talking about God here not some 20 man construction crew. I’m not a Christian or an atheist. I don’t exactly think of it as God “creating” the universe. I think everything that is in the universe including God has always existed. All possibilities have always been there. God simply allowed one to manifest itself physically. Not in six days and not creature by creature, no magic hat; just a gradual becoming. We’re his creation, a part of him. The Bible is just a very crude way of man trying to explain what God’s consciousness conceived. It tries to explain how he did it, why he did and what he’s like. It’s kind of similar to a blind person describing a sunset or a deaf person describing music. We turned into religion what should have been more like a fantastic creation of art, music and philosophy. We twisted our awareness of God into potential reward and punishment, when it should have been awe and appreciation. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2004, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/25 "2004-03-03T23:26:28Z")
> [@Renob](#): > > Perhaps so; I’m not very scientifically inclined, history is more my bag. However, I’m still very skeptical of accepting current scientific understanding as the final word (or close to the final word, as you seem to be saying) Not really; science is, by it’s very nature, an open-ended quest. > [@](#): > > In any area. If you look throughout history, every era felt their “current understanding of the nature of things” was very advanced and was close to the true way of looking at things. But what we need to look at is _their reasons_ for understanding things the way in which they understood them; science is pretty much set apart from all of them in the way it describes the physical universe because it does it _by repeatedly observing the physical universe_ - straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were. > [@](#): > > And while I do not doubt that our current understanding is very advanced, I’m also pretty sure that there will be another Newton or Einstein to come along and fundamentally alter our way of thinking about the universe. Perhaps, although some things simply can’t _be_ overturned; nobody is going to turn up and tell us that objects fall upwards, for example. Certainly there are a number of competing theories and hypotheses about the way the universe works at its most fundamental level, and the final answer, when it comes, might turn out to be quite surprising, but it will have to _incorporate_ much of Newton and Einstein, simply because Newton’s and Einstein’s stuff _works_. But in any case, that’s a little off-topic - there have been quite a number of occasions when the universe could have pulled a rabbit from the hat and shot down the theory of evolution, but it hasn’t happened - recent discoveries and studies such as bioregiography and endogenous retroviral insertions, are _consistently reinforcing and corroborating_ the concept - there comes a point (and it has already come, IMO) where the sheer weight of consistent evidence adds up to something that, to overturn it, would require a discovery like the aforementioned bedroom elephants. ---
**Author:** ![JS\_Princeton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/57b2e6/32.png) [@JS\_Princeton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JS_Princeton)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/26 "2004-03-04T01:28:00Z")
> [@Renob](#): > > However, I’m still very skeptical of accepting current scientific understanding as the final word (or close to the final word, as you seem to be saying) in any area. As a scientist, I beg of you, PLEASE do NOT accept current scientific understanding as the “final word” or “close to the final word”. Please do accept the descriptions offered by science that are correct. In other words, the Big Bang is simply a description of the way the universe is set up. As a basic idea it is simply not going to go away. There were probably people around during Newton’s time that thought that the three laws of motion would go away. They’re still around today, though we understand their context a whole lot better. Same thing goes for such things as evolution or the Big Bang. They are descriptions of observational fact in an easy to digest package: that is all. There is no such thing in science as the “final word”. We will always be testing, proding, and poking around nature to see where the errors lie. If you think, however, that somehow the universe is going to magically be made to fit a conservative or fundamentalist viewpoint of a literal interpretation of the Christian scriptures then I’m afraid you have another thing coming. > [@](#): > > If you look throughout history, every era felt their “current understanding of the nature of things” was very advanced and was close to the true way of looking at things. And, in their own way, every era was right. We just have more information and observations now to contextualize their statements. Aristotle was wrong. He wasn’t, however, without basis. Some of the statements he made did lie in observational fact. We now explain these observations and why they misled him in ways that enable us to address the paradoxical or falsified parts of his statements about nature. Same goes for every scientific advancement. > [@](#): > > And while I do not doubt that our current understanding is very advanced, I’m also pretty sure that there will be another Newton or Einstein to come along and fundamentally alter our way of thinking about the universe. No argument there. The thing is, the “fundamental altering” is not going to get rid of an Earth that’s some five billion years old or a universe that’s some fourteen billion years old. > [@](#): > > This quote recognizes what to me is a fundamental truth: Man’s knowledge, no matter how advanced, is still quite limited. And it is the conflagration of the fact that science recognizes this with the uncomfortability of people who cannot accept a rational or scientific descriptive process of nature that causes people to simply “drop the discussion” or act “dubious” as yourself. It is a propogation of ignorance I find to be the height of arrogance because it presupposes that you know “better” than the scientist without even deigning to find out what the scientist thinks he or she knows. I would never pretend to say that I knew more about history or the trajectories of history than a historian, why should a historian know more about science or the trajectories of science than a scientist? ---
**Author:** ![B.Serum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/b.serum/32/14266_2.png) [@B.Serum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/B.Serum)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/27 "2004-03-04T01:57:02Z")
Dear Faucet, “Your” - possessive adjective; relating to you or yourself “You’re” - contraction of “you are” ---
**Author:** ![Susanann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/7ab992/32.png) [@Susanann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Susanann)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/28 "2004-03-04T03:07:20Z")
> [@Renob](#): > > I’m really agnostic about it because I simply don’t care. It’s one of those unimportant debates that takes us away from focusing on the important stuff in the Bible. Furthermore, it’s a debate that can’t be resolved one way or another, so why worry about trying to figure out something that will never be figured out? I think you made an important point. God “could” have taken a long time to make the universe, or he “could” have done it in a little over a 100 hours. He “could” have used evolution, or not. I really dont care “how” He did it. Since God is eternal, He really had no reason to hurry up, but neither was He restricted to only using very slow processes either. However She did it, probably depended on Her mood at the time She came up with the idea of building a new universe. It really makes no difference as long as you believe that God could have used either method. I will soon find out for sure exactly which method God used, but that wont even be near the first question I ask when I get to heaven. ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Saul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/58f4c7/32.png) [@Roland\_Saul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Saul)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/29 "2004-03-04T03:18:27Z")
This guy gets to Heaven and upon meeting God, asks why in His omnipotence he didn’t make things perfect for everybody. God says " What the F\*\*\* do you want for a 6 day job?" budda boomp ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/30 "2004-03-04T03:22:30Z")
> [@Faucet](#): > > I personally tend to believe 6 days because we are talking about God here not some 20 man construction crew. Here’s what I could never figure out – if we _are_ talking about **GOD** here and not some 20 man construction crew, why did he need six days? Couldn’t an omnipotent god create everything in the universe instantaneously? Whether you accept the existence of an omnipotent creator god or not, the “six days” figure just doesn’t make sense if you take it to mean literal 24-hour Earth days. ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Saul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/58f4c7/32.png) [@Roland\_Saul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Saul)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/31 "2004-03-04T03:25:26Z")
God and Jesus are playing golf one fine afternoon. Jesus tees up on the 1st and slices heavy into the trees on the side of the fairway. God tees up, slices the opposite way, the ball careens off of a bridge and into the water trap. A turmoil ensues in the water, a turtle surfaces with the ball in it’s mouth, and an eagle dives from on high and deftly plucks the ball out of the turtles mouth and rises over the green. The eagle drops the ball, it lands about 6 inches from the pin and rolls towards the hole, stopping on the very edge of the cup. Out from the rough scurries a chipmunk, and kicks the ball into the cup. Jesus turns to God, throws his club down, and says, “Dammit Dad, for once can we not screw around and just play golf?” budda budda budda budda bomp bisp. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/32 "2004-03-04T03:29:48Z")
As a minor note addressing the oversimplicity of the OP, being Christian isn’t critical to believing the account in Genesis, nor is being an atheist necessary to disbelieve it. ---
**Author:** ![vanilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f19dbf/32.png) [@vanilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vanilla)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 3:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/33 "2004-03-04T03:30:53Z")
I say all life on earth created in 6 days. Humans fully human, also. Yes, some dogs and such evolved but not out of their species. Well, you asked. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/34 "2004-03-04T03:57:02Z")
My take, since I don’t fully believe in creationism or Darwinism: I don’t think that God-Days are any more comparable to human days than Sim-Days are. God’s concept of a day might have been radically different than that of people he explained the tale to. However, I think the " In The Beginning" outlined in Genesis is _not_ a description of God creating the Earth, so how many days is a little moot. Rather, it’s a do-over; maybe it really did take just six human days, who knows? We know that he decided he needed a do-over later too, in Noah’s day, _and_ he promised never to use floods to destroy the Earth again, and that level of contriteness suggests a pattern of destructive tantrums to me, not an isolated incident. So he made the dinosaurs, and decided he didn’t want them anymore, so he rid the planet of them. Tried making a few creatures before man, and decided that they weren’t what he wanted, so he let/made them go extinct. Then he cleared the slate once again, created Adam, Eve and several other (off in “Nod”…they weren’t focal characters, so we don’t hear about them until Cain tells God they’ll kill him if they find him) humans- though they might not have been Sapiens- and got bored and left things with the ablity evolve from that point, which is what lead to specialization within species. On the other hand, I really like the creation myth in Popol Vuh about how man had several protypes, all flawed in some way, so it’s interesting to consider if that’s a myth meant to support **or** explain away evolution, or neither. Applying it to the proto-humans, it does make you wonder if we haven’t found “the missing link” because there wasn’t one to begin with. Perhaps it’s just me. ---
**Author:** ![IWLN](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b5ac83/32.png) [@IWLN](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IWLN)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/35 "2004-03-04T05:57:42Z")
That’s **NOT** good news, **Elfkin**. We have an **OMNIPOTENT** , fickle, easily bored deity controlling our lives??? :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/36 "2004-03-04T07:21:58Z")
I believe that God continues to create the universe and that science has barely begun to scratch the surface of the mysteries. The more possibilities that science uncovers, the more amazed I am at how big is God and how small my understanding. ---
**Author:** ![Wrenchslinger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/94ad74/32.png) [@Wrenchslinger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wrenchslinger)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 7:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/37 "2004-03-04T07:53:18Z")
The question is do you think God used evolution to create the universe or did he create it in 6 days? I think a couple of things. God is unchanging and constant. God’s doesn’t “act” in the same way a person, or for that matter a physical object “acts.” To ask if God “did” something is like asking how much does a rainbow weigh? It doesn’t work because you can’t grab a rainbow and put it on a scale. Similarly you can’t expect to prove or disprove God through mechanistic means. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/38 "2004-03-04T13:16:49Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > **rsgd:** > Well, **something** is obviously necessary in order to reconcile modern “Biblical literalist” beliefs in divine creation with the theories of modern science. It is not necessary. The hardline literalists are in error and indulge in theological innovations. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/39 "2004-03-04T14:32:41Z")
Well, let’s see. On the one hand, we have the text of Genesis 1. This alleges that God created the world in six days, and set aside the seventh as the Sabbath. That pretty well rules out “one day is as a thousand years” interpretation – if it has any clear meaning, it’s talking about a calendar week. However, we’re viewing this through the eyes of 20th Century objectivism – any “factual” report must necessarily be a literal account of events. For ancient peoples, the idea of _story_ was popular. One did not take the account of, say, what Achilles said when he got word of Patroclus’s death as a verbatim transcription by Homer, who was lurking in Achilles’ tent (and ogling Briseis), but rather as a _reconstruction_ of what happened, characterizing Achilles as the sort of person Homer understood him to be. As _story_ (or _myth_ in the anthropological sense, as in Campbell’s work), Genesis 1 makes some strong points about **how** God created – by calling things into existence by His Word, in sequence rather than all at once, with the view that all He had created was good… He did not use a demiurge like Tolkien’s one and the Valar; He did not create some things good and others evil, like Ahura Mazda; He did not get down into the muck and wrestle some “good” thing out of it, like Muskrat. The Creation was intentional, not the result of His forgetting to wipe up some spilled semen after His orgasm, as in several creation myths. Now, if one takes the Bible as in some manner the Word of God (and if one doesn’t, this question becomes completely moot), we therefore have two records of Creation – His account of it, as set down by Moses or the “P” writer in Genesis 1, and the Creation itself. The Creation bears extensive evidence of being remarkably older than the 4004 BC chronology, which can be presented at any desired length – but for purposes of this discussion, take as given that observational cosmology suggests an origin in the Big Bang between 10 and 20 billion years ago, an Earth with rocks suggesting a planetary origin about 4.6 billion years ago, metazoan fossils dating back 660 million years, etc. Now, let’s look at YEC. God nowhere specifies what parts of the Bible are written in which genres. But there is nothing more obvious than that different parts are written in different ways for different purposes. Judges is not written by the same criteria as Psalms, Matthew differs from both, and Ephesians differs from all three. To presume Genesis 1 to be a literalistic historical account is to impose a human critical theory on the text. That theory may therefore be incorrect without in any way finding its referent to be “wrong” – it simply becomes misinterpreted. Okay, now let’s look at the nature of God. **If** He created in a six-day period, with results that **appear** to be 10-20 billion years old, then He is a trickster God à la Loki, Coyote, and some of the other creations of polytheisms. But for Him to be a trickster of this sort does not accord with the testimonies of His believers nor with His self-descriptions elsewhere in Scripture, and in particular not with how He is characterized by Jesus, who is on the presumption of Biblical accuracy that we’re working with, the ultimate human authority on the nature of God (being a part of Him). The logic is inescapable – if the Bible has any truth value whatsoever, and on the presumption that the conclusions from the massive stock of evidence collected and interpreted by competent scientists are in any way accurate, then the six-day theory is ruled out, as depicting God with a character that He does not in fact have. Obviously, other conclusions are possible – but they require rejection of some part of the evidence at hand. “All them scientists are wrong, because the Bible clearly says…” is a case of advanced ostrichism, rejecting the data because they do not conform to your comfortable theory. Rejecting the Bible because it is not written in the simplicity of “Run, Spot, Run” is demanding a simplistic view of one aspect of a complex world. And so on. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [March 4, 2004, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277/40 "2004-03-04T14:45:27Z")
> [@](#): > > _Roland Saul wrote:_ > God and Jesus are playing golf one fine afternoon… You see, the way this joke is supposed to work, is that you have to hide the fact that the second golfer is God until the punch line. You start out with something like “Jesus tees off and slices it into the woods. Then the next player tees it up,…” The deal with jokes is that the punch line has to present the listener with some new information that lets him figure out a connection to previous events. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-your-a-christian-answer-this/232277.md?page=3)