I’ve heard and read numerous times that the fossils, rock strata, petroleum deposits, etc. (anything that indicates an advanced age for this planet) did not occur naturally, but were created by God as a way of testing our faith. In other words, the entire pre-history of our planet that we have deduced through scientific investigation is just a huge hoax.
I have a question for those who believe this: if there is a God who is capable of, and willing to, design and create such a hoax 5,000 years ago, how do you know that the world was not created yesterday? It seems to me that an omnipotent God could just as easily have created everything 15 minutes ago, providing us with false memories of the entire history of the world up to this point.
Have any of you ever given this any thought? I’m curious about how you deal with this possibility.
If core beliefs (axioms) are simple as in evolutionary theory, then if they have great explanatory value for the complexities which surround us, they are valuable as a simplification and an explanation.
If one of your axioms is ‘God’, then anything is possible and it explains nothing.
Why not go further- if God is so powerful, maybe all is an illusion and there is nothing apart from your phenomenology; no-one and nothing need exist, for God may be creating minute-by-minute everything you experience.
This way lies solipsism, and possibly psychosis.
God explains everything and nothing; that is the problem.
Have you really? You should be very careful to avoid presenting a “straw man” image of creationist beliefs. Most young-earth creationists believe that mainstream scientists have grossly misinterpreted all of the evidence, not that God planted the evidence to test our faith.
Exactly why most creationists do not hold this belief. There are some aspects of the universe towards which creationists take an omphalos approach. For example, when God created the first trees, he presumably gave them rings, even though they had not actually been around for years. But for things like radiometric dating, varve formation, rock strata, etc. they generally posit that these do not actually indicate an old earth, and can be better explained by the flood, not that God is intentionally deceiving us.
Pjen: I decided not to go that far in my OP! Contemplating the ‘reality of reality’ leads me to doubt my OWN existence!
I am curious, though, as to whether or not fundamentalists have considered this, and how they deal with it. Is the possibility ignored? Is there some specific aspect of the fundamentalist doctrine that addresses this issue? Does God speak to them and assure them that their beliefs are correct? If there is a God, by what means do they determine that he is not ‘fooling them’?
Hmm, maybe I should have just gone all the way and named the thread ‘Debate on the nature of reality’. Maybe I’m a figment of my own imagination?
Did you mention psychosis? I’m feeling a little peculiar right now . . .
I have long wondered why people would have more faith in words than nature. Anyway, will-to-power is a real weakness, despite its label of strength. Anyone who can’t harmonize with knowledge and nature is inflicting their fear or will into the works, evidence of passion against reason (as opposed to passion for reason). Why is it weak? Control is weakness. We all imagine that injustice is the strong controlling the weak, but nature offers nothing as artificial as control. Rather, all control is the weak over the strong, hence the natural injustice. The weaker humans get, the more we wish to control nature and impose our infantile misunderstandings on her, and everyone else. In fact, our near-absolute control over nature has watered the human race down to its weakest state ever known. We are so weak, we can’t even trust the majority of humans to individually wield the powers that our already at our fingertips: cloning, nanotechnology, genetic-design, etc. I am not calling all humans incompetent, but when we spend so much energy policing ourselves and imagine it to be natural, we can then know something is terribly wrong. God is humanity’s weakest, most impotent invention. Or, as it were to some, humanity is God’s most controllable invention. The real question is, do we allow those who worship God as themselves to easily control the strong and by default become a third-party to our own injustice?
I have in fact encountered some creation believers who do claim that that god might have been trying to test our faith or fooling us. Usually in reference to dinosaur fossils, though.
That’s always been my back-pocket question for hardcore Christian believers…where is mention in the Bible of dinosaurs? Some of the damn things were astonishingly large, after all, not the kind of animals you could co-exist peacefully with, as even the herbivorous ones could have and would have killed people by stepping on them!
And yet they are never even alluded to in the Bible, pre-flood. Because that is another creationist factoid: dinosaurs, as a group, were left off the ark. Why? I can’t remember…
I had a creationist tell me once that the “great creatures of the sea” in Gen. 1:21 should be translated as “dinosaur.” And of course, dinosaurs are mentioned in Job as any good fundy will tell you. Hardly any serious creationists think that dinosaurs were left off the ark. Most think that Noah brought eggs or juveniles.
As crazy as creationist beliefs are, we should at least try to understand what type of craziness it is. How annoyed do you feel when a creationist says: “So basically evolution says that nothing exploded and created the Earth, and then rocks turned into amoebas which turned into monkeys which turned into humans.” Creationists probably feel just as insulted when evolutionists ascribe positions to them which they do not hold. I’m not saying that no creationist believes that dinosaurs were left off the ark, or that God is testing us, but most of the big names don’t.
I don’t really want to get involved in a creationist-bashing thread, but Coosa asked me a question. The answer to the question, “How do they deal with this?” is, they don’t. Things that cannot be explained are either accepted on faith, or ignored. It’s a very simplistic world view, but it works for some people. Not all of us have to have every little nitpicky detail of how Life, the Universe, and Everything works explained logically. We have lots of room in our heads for miracles and UFOs and Lost Mayan Cities and the Romans rowing galleys to America and international Masonic conspiracies, not to mention the United States Congress. I mean, I’ve never personally seen Congress–how do I know it even exists? Maybe it’s all a gigantic mind control experiment done by aliens.
And FTR, I’m a “modified creationist” or whatever you want to call it–evolution happened, but God made it happen. I believe in God, but I also believe in dinosaurs and geology and 4 billion-year-old moon rocks and Carl Sagan’s billions and billions of worlds, some of which might have life forms on them–just think of all those potential new consumers for American post-industrialist trade goods…Can we modify a skateboard for an alien with no feet?
Look, you believe that the bible was created a long time ago, right? And do you think the bible is some kind of “hoax”? So your beliefs cancel eachother out.
Not all Christians believe in the whole “the Earth was created in EXACTLY seven days” schtick. I believe that the Christian Bible shouldn’t be taken literally in every sentence.
After all, “The Lord is my shepherd,” as it says in Psalm 23. That does not make me a sheep.
Jesus dubbed Peter “The Rock” on which the church was to be created. That doesn’t make him ignious, sedimentary, or metamorphic.
SYMBOLISM, guys! SYMBOLISM!
Honestly, is there any real way in which 26 letters plus punctuation can accurately describe the creation of the universe? I think not.
Uh, yes, I really have. Apparently the local religious groups are not up-to-date on the current creationism theories - “God created fossils to test our faith” is still pretty standard doctrine in my part of the world. I didn’t mean to imply in my OP that all creationists believed this, which is why I addressed my questions to “those who believe this”. As David B. said, they may not be in the majority, but they are definitely out there. Well, actually they’re HERE, living next door.
This is big Jerry Falwell/Pat Robertson/Oral Roberts/Jimmy Swaggart territory, if that gives you any clue.
Ducky: I didn’t intend for this to be a creationist-bashing thread - I’m perfectly willing to bash them when the mood strikes me :), but I’m honestly just curious. BTW, I find ‘intelligent design’ much more palatable than the ‘young earth’ claims.
fatherjohnsaid:
I’m afraid I don’t get your point here. Could you clarify this a little? FWIW, I don’t believe the Bible was ‘created’ at all - it was written. It’s a book. (Personally, I feel that if there was anything ‘holy’ about it, the cats wouldn’t have peed on the last one I had. Unless that was some sort of feline sacrament I’m not familiar with.)
(Come to think of it, one of my dogs peed on a Baptist preacher a few years ago. What do you suppose that means?)
Anyway, I suspect you may have made some assumptions about my beliefs that are not indicated in my OP.
I Am Not A Creationist, but I have a misspent youth listening to Christian Talk Radio (I Am Also Not A Christian).
Per the Bible Answer Man’s radio show:
#1) There weren’t very many dinosaurs worldwide. The fossils we’ve found were the total remains of pretty much all the dinosaurs there were.
#2) They were mentioned in the Bible. Leviathan, among others, were dinosaurs. :rolleyes: The fish-thing that swallowed Jonah may have been another one (I’m not positive he tied Jonah in.)
#3) They were on the ark, in pairs of 2 rather than 8 'cause dinosaurs aren’t Kosher.(Assuming dinos were reptiles, would they be Kosher?) We know that they were on the ark, 'cause the Bible says (paraphrase) “Anything that flew, walked or crawled”
#4) Dinosaurs all died out immediatly after the Flood because the climate changed after the water canopy melted. The genetic damage we’ve gotten as a result of the lack of the water canopy is also why we A)can’t boink our own siblings like Cain/Abel/Unnamed Sisters/etc and B)why we don’t live 999 years like the Bible old timers.
Hope this helps, Stoid.
If any of you want to actually hear the guy, he has a nationwide radio show and you can hear a webbroadcast of his stuff here. He used to talk evoloution once a week or so, usually in conjunction with dumb acronyms like “The F.A.C.E. that demonstrates the farce of evolution”.
#2) They were mentioned in the Bible. Leviathan, among others, were dinosaurs. :rolleyes: The fish-thing that swallowed Jonah may have been another one (I’m not positive he tied Jonah in.)
Fenris **
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Fenris,
By definition, if it swims, it’s not a dinosaur. Dinosaurs are only land animals.
Having personally witnessed the workings of Congress on many occasions, I can assure you that it is, in fact, a gigantic mind control experiment done by aliens.
It is of course true that some creationists view virtually all physical evidence as a test of their faith. The problem is that some creationists who don’t believe that will probably stumble across this thread, see all the evil evolutionists presenting a straw man of their position, and come back more renewed in their delusions than ever.
I know that DavidB is a fellow atheist. How do you feel when you open up a thread started by a fundy and see questions like:
There are of course some strong atheists, but most are weak atheists, for whom these questions are insulting straw men, which serve only to inflame.
Yes, there certainly are some creationists who believe in an omphalos universe. The OP demonstrates quite nicely why this is an absurd position, which is why most educated and professional creationists disavow much of it.
Not all of us have to have every little nitpicky detail of how Life, the Universe, and Everything works explained logically. We have lots of room in our heads for miracles and UFOs and Lost Mayan Cities and the Romans rowing galleys to America and international Masonic conspiracies, not to mention the United States Congress. I mean, I’ve never personally seen Congress–how do I know it even exists? Maybe it’s all a gigantic mind control experiment done by aliens.
I’m afraid I don’t get your point here. Could you clarify this a little? FWIW, I don’t believe the Bible was ‘created’ at all - it was written. It’s a book.