But to flesh it out a bit, It took me a while for God to have me realize that He meant what He says. I was trying to integrate the 2 theories at times, mainly by stretching out the 6 days, thought that doesn’t exactly work as flowering plants came before animals which is opposite evolution. Other times I just held both God’s and man’s views together, side by side having no way to reconcile them. As I trusted God and His Word more and more, He showed me that man’s views are very very flawed and most of the time totally backwards from what the truth is. He showed me that by man thinking he can go without God in discovering ‘facts’ about origins, man has opened himself up to deceptions which is interlaced with science and other studies.
When one hears from God it is exciting and you do feel enlightened and the tendency is to want to tell, and even enforce what you heard on others. Over time and refinement you learn that forcing one’s views on others doesn’t work, and it just holding out the hand of the love of God to them which will allow them to trust you help them.
There are other aspects on this as well, but that is once such answer.
The Christians who set themselves in opposition to science do so because they see it as an assault on their belief system, which in turn they see as an assault on their entire worldview, which in turn they see as an assault on their very being. If a person thinks that apes don’t go to heaven, they may percieve evolution as “threatening” their very salvation. This can be a potent motivation, in cases demonstrably backing them into displays of severe denial and rejection of reality.
I will ask that all hypersensitive non-biblical-literalists note that I am explicitly not referring to all humans who call themselves Christain, just the ones who set themselves in opposition to science. I’m judging them by their fruits, not their label.
Jesus is alive via the Resurrection and preached to many.
While I’m sure this is true for some, what the Word has taught me is step above all that, they are using facts of man, we are using the truths of God. It is a assault, but is it one where man is throwing stones at the Starship Enterprise which God gives us. The only way we can mess up is engage them on their terms, land the ship and throw rocks back at them instead of nuking them from orbit
Before we start making random comments, lets all keep in mind that I was disputing the idea that Jesus was crucified to make way for Paul. Now, whether Jesus was ressurected or not, whether he’s still wandering around failing to pay property taxes or not, did Paul’s arrival on the scene precede the crucifiction of Jesus?
Mmm, right. The interesting thing is that despite all of this nuking from orbit you’re doing, science and the factual world are still around. Apparently you’re shooting blanks, eh? It’s almost as if you didn’t have a starship at all…
If God truly exists and is truly omnipotent, then he doesn’t need some 6,000-year-old book to prove his existence. And if the Bible truly is the literal Word of God, why all the vague descriptions and internal inconsistencies? Why does God’s Word fail to name the Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus (a story for which there is no external corroboration), while the historically verifiable accounts of the Assyrian & Babylonian captivities are described in precise detail? Why does the Old Testament God prove himself via divine miracles, from the burning bush to making the sun stand still, whereas in modern times the best he can muster is making Christ’s image appear in a taco?
And how do evangelical Christians resolve the fact that most of the early Genesis stories, including both Creation myths and the Great Flood, are actually “borrowed” from older Sumerian myths, including the Epic of Gilgamesh? Actually, that answer is simple – they claim it’s all a grand conspiracy, Satan’s Conspiracy. Ask any fundie, and that’s exactly what they will tell you – anything that doesn’t fit into their small, comfortable world view must be a conspiracy by Satan.
I heard the voice of God once. God told me I was the resurrection of an ancient vampire who had the power to open a rift in space/time and cast down all the humans who have displeased me, trapping their souls in that rift where they will forever writhe in anguish, permanently frozen in time. Then the drugs wore off…
Oh come now, most evangelical Christians don’t have a damned clue what’s in Sumerian mythology. They’re bubbleboys, not conspiracy theorists, for the vastly larger most part.
Had I to guess, I’d say the primary motivation of Creationists is fear, namely fear that their lives are meaningless without some powerful outside agency that is involved with and interested in their fates.
They are both. At the very least, they have to find a way to handwave away all those scientists who keep coming up with evidence that proves them wrong. So, obviously all those scientists are part of a liberal/Satanic/Communist/gay/Muslim/whatever conspiracy to promote anti-Christian lies. They all really know that the Bible is literally true but are pretending otherwise.
There are probably a small set of wingnuts who think that there was a conspiracy by satan to plant false evidence of biblical ancestry in sumerian myths, but seriously most of them will have never even heard of it. The closest they will come is to say that anybody who mentions such things (or anything else they disagree with) is a puppet of satan sent to tempt them. But I think that’s different from calling the information a conspiracy - it’s rejecting the message without bothering to construct a comprehensive explanation for it, or possibly even rejecting the messenger rather than the message. Basically it’s sticking the fingers in the ears and yelling “La la la I can’t hear you I don’t need facts I have truth la la la” rather than going around muttering that the entire world is a gigantic sham being actively and continuously manipulated by satan just to deceive them.
There are exceptions of course - some true paranoid nutters will exist. There are exceptions to everything.
That’s not what I was saying at all. I was saying that modern Christians would much rather talk about what Paul had to say than what Jesus had to say. After all, Jesus said some pretty uncomfortable things about rich people and poor people and stuff, and not a single word condemning those dirty homos. Paul, on the other hand, was pretty intolerant, making his views much more in line with modern Christians’. I was saying that Christians love to talk about Jesus dying, but when it comes to actual teachings to live your life by, they look to Paul.
How could a modern Christian be “anxious to get Jesus crucified as quickly as possible, so that he wouldn’t be able to open his mouth”? He’s going to be crucified in negative two thousand years. It’s hard to get much quicker than that - it’s literally the “sooner” in “immideately if not sooner”.
To some degree I’m pulling your chain, but that’s what you should expect when you mean one thing and say something completely different…
Are you serious? It’s a literary technique. If you don’t get it, I don’t know how to explain it. Picture Christian A saying “Jesus says we should sell everything we have and give it to the poor.” Christian B says “Yeah, yeah, I don’t want to hear that shit, skip ahead to the part where that troublemaker gets dead, and let’s get to the gay bashing.”
ID states that certain biological mechanisms simply could not have evolved naturally. There is no scientific basis for these statements.
There are other differences, but as soon as a god-botherer says “There’s no way the eye could’ve evolved” and someone more knowledgable says “yes it could’ve, and here’s how”, the argument is over. It’s been over for years and years.
Are you serious? It’s a literary technique. If you don’t get it, I don’t know how to explain it. Picture Christian A saying “Jesus says we should sell everything we have and give it to the poor.” Christian B says “Yeah, yeah, I don’t want to hear that shit, skip ahead to the part where that troublemaker gets dead, and let’s get to the gay bashing.”
From what I’ve seen, there is a giant disconnect in thought processes. Religion, which is very important to these people, did not stem from logical thought but from faith and revelation. They therefore assume that evolution and science also come from faith and revelation, and that Darwin was a prophet. How else to explain why they think the lie that Darwin recanted on his deathbed would mean anything, even if true? How else to explain their fascination that Newton was a creationist?
Though no doubt some of them don’t understand the evidence for evolution, for the most part I don’t think they get why it is even important? How many creationists who wander in here even consider the evidence. I think kanicbird’s post is an example of what I am saying.
Creationism is a secular exercise in consolidation of power over churches, and congretation. It has nothing to do will faith in God, only faith in Religious Hierarchy. Left to their own hearts and minds, Christians might go around forgiving everyone, and loving everyone. Where would we be then?
Far more useful to encourage the faithful to expect all knowledge and guidance to come from the clergy, or at least be reviewed by them before acceptance.
And what God says is that humans evolved from other organisms, which in turn evolved from other organisms, over a span of billions of years. He wrote this down quite clearly in the structure of the world. To claim otherwise is to call God a liar.
