5 Questions for Creationists

Started by Sci Fi Fan, November 16, 2013, 02:51:00 PM

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ConservativeMe

I believe in both creationism and evolutionism.  In a way, all of your questions are irrelevant to me, because evolution is part of creationism.  Evolutionism is the mechanism upon with the creation plan worked.

How can I believe that?  Simple, its how I view the Bible, upon which you based your questions.  I view the Bible as inspired by God, written by man, put together by man.

I've never believed that it was seven days, as we know a day to be.  Nothing states that it could not be longer (again, inspired by God, written by man, put together by man).  As for your question about other sentient creatures, who is to say God cannot change his mind?

I find both sides to have their extreme fanatics which are, well, closed minded, and they have the same problem.  They take the Bible literally.
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Solar

Quote from: ConservativeMe on July 29, 2014, 08:43:26 AM
I believe in both creationism and evolutionism.  In a way, all of your questions are irrelevant to me, because evolution is part of creationism.  Evolutionism is the mechanism upon with the creation plan worked.

How can I believe that?  Simple, its how I view the Bible, upon which you based your questions.  I view the Bible as inspired by God, written by man, put together by man.

I've never believed that it was seven days, as we know a day to be.  Nothing states that it could not be longer (again, inspired by God, written by man, put together by man).  As for your question about other sentient creatures, who is to say God cannot change his mind?

I find both sides to have their extreme fanatics which are, well, closed minded, and they have the same problem.  They take the Bible literally.
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CM, please use the quote function so everyone knows to whom you're responding to.
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supsalemgr

Quote from: ConservativeMe on July 29, 2014, 08:43:26 AM
I believe in both creationism and evolutionism.  In a way, all of your questions are irrelevant to me, because evolution is part of creationism.  Evolutionism is the mechanism upon with the creation plan worked.

How can I believe that?  Simple, its how I view the Bible, upon which you based your questions.  I view the Bible as inspired by God, written by man, put together by man.

I've never believed that it was seven days, as we know a day to be.  Nothing states that it could not be longer (again, inspired by God, written by man, put together by man).  As for your question about other sentient creatures, who is to say God cannot change his mind?

I find both sides to have their extreme fanatics which are, well, closed minded, and they have the same problem.  They take the Bible literally.

Excellent observation and I agree. God is infinite and timeless to me. Therefore, man cannot comprehend how we are where we are at this point. Recorded history began with man's ability to document events. How time has been recorded has obviously changed. However, those without faith cannot comprehend the beliefs of believers.
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carlb

#18
Quote from: Sci Fi Fan on July 28, 2014, 09:41:24 PM
I've lived near fundamentalists.  Trust me; they actually believe in it.  The talking snake, and everything.

Yes, and I even believe in the occasional talking ass (Numbers 22).

The "snake" was how Satan manifested himself to the first Humans in whom God placed the Spirit of Man.  As usual, you misrepresent the beliefs of those you'd like to discredit.

Your other tactic (commonly practiced by the God-Haters) is to throw up an entire list of "questions" or "concerns" so you have wiggle room. If you're sincere, ask ONE question per post so they can be thrashed out properly. Of course you're not interested in honest debate, but only ridiculing things you refuse to understand.

Darth Fife

Quote from: carlb on August 02, 2014, 02:48:47 PM
Yes, and I even believe in the occasional talking ass (Numbers 22).

The "snake" was how Satan manifested himself to the first Humans in whom God placed the Spirit of Man.  As usual, you misrepresent the beliefs of those you'd like to discredit.

Your other tactic (commonly practiced by the God-Haters) is to throw up an entire list of "questions" or "concerns" so you have wiggle room. If you're sincere, ask ONE question per post so they can be thrashed out properly. Of course you're not interested in honest debate, but only ridiculing things you refuse to understand.

I'll ask just one question.

If god is all powerful can he make a rock so large that he, himself, cannot lift it? :rolleyes:

-Darth

Mountainshield

Quote from: Darth Fife on August 08, 2014, 04:26:16 PM
I'll ask just one question.

If god is all powerful can he make a rock so large that he, himself, cannot lift it? :rolleyes:

-Darth

The omnipotence paradox, nothing is impossible and everything is possible with God, and his understanding is beyond measure, which means that we can't comprehend him so our own hypothetical contradictions and paradoxes are irrelevant in the context of God's existence and is just a entertaining linguistic exercise, not a real scenario.

walkstall

Quote from: Darth Fife on August 08, 2014, 04:26:16 PM
I'll ask just one question.

If god is all powerful can he make a rock so large that he, himself, cannot lift it? :rolleyes:

-Darth

I learned at a very young age, that it is people that go around doing stupid things.  Even at my age people are doing stupid things.   :lol:
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Solar

Quote from: Darth Fife on August 08, 2014, 04:26:16 PM
I'll ask just one question.

If god is all powerful can he make a rock so large that he, himself, cannot lift it? :rolleyes:

-Darth
Why are you asking questions afforded 5 year olds?
Go ask a 9 year old, they'll wonder why you think like a five year old too.

Seriously, don't try and view this through your bias and hatred or limitations over your view of the ethereal , but simply ask yourself that very question, of something wielding such infinite power.

You stifle your understanding of life beyond the human experience, simply by all the limitations placed upon you as a mere human.
If you understood or had all the answers to life, you would see no reason to continue it's path laid out before you, the gift of life is our quest in understanding it's, and our purpose.

It's the very reason people have faith that something more powerful and wiser exists,  could even create the sphere in which we exist, because God knows, man is incapable of creating such wonder.
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Darth Fife

Quote from: Mountainshield on August 09, 2014, 02:18:23 AM
The omnipotence paradox, nothing is impossible and everything is possible with God, and his understanding is beyond measure, which means that we can't comprehend him so our own hypothetical contradictions and paradoxes are irrelevant in the context of God's existence and is just a entertaining linguistic exercise, not a real scenario.

And we know this because...

...other men have written books that tell us so.  :rolleyes:

-Darth

Solar

Quote from: Darth Fife on August 09, 2014, 08:00:17 AM
And we know this because...

...other men have written books that tell us so.  :rolleyes:

-Darth
I see you were typing while I was posting, and assume you missed my post.
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Darth Fife

Quote from: Solar on August 09, 2014, 08:46:31 AM
I see you were typing while I was posting, and assume you missed my post.

Okay, here is the same question asked with a little more sophistication.

You posit that God created the universe and all that is in it. That means that God created the laws which govern that universe. Question: Can God violate the laws which govern the universe which he created?

And here is one for the Evolution/Science Deniers out there.

One of the arguments used by Evolution Deniers is that changing of one species into another has not been observed in modern time, i.e. a lion has always been a lion, and an elephant has always been an elephant for all of recorded history. For Evolution to be vaild, they claim, it must be an ongoing process.

Fair enough.

So, let me ask all of you theist out there.

Does God still speak to his "chosen" people today, either directly or through "prophets"? If not, why not?

The point I'm getting at is this. Most Christian discount the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as nothing more than a "cult" religion started by a 19th Century charlatan. Oh, many, if not most, Christian tolerate the Mormons, but very few think they are truly Christians.

And yet, the founding of the LDS church and the persecutions they faced over the past 150 years is very analogous to that of the early Christian Church.

What makes Christians so damned sure that God didn't decide that mainstream Christianity had drifted away from the true course Christ had set for it, and so he decided to raise up a prophet in the name of Joseph Smith to do a disc format and reboot of Christianity?

-Darth

daidalos

Quote from: Sci Fi Fan on November 16, 2013, 02:51:00 PM
By "creationist" I am referring to those who prescribe to a religious creation story; specifically, my question is targeted towards Christian creationists.

1.   If God created humans and animals within a decently small timespan, why don't we ever find homo sapiens fossils from the same era as Australopithecus?  We can see with hominid fossils that they come from different eras, and it just happens that as the dates approach the present, they become more and more similar to us.  It seems quite mightily convenient for Evolutionary Theory that we find a similar trend throughout every fossil hierarchy.  It doesn't seem to fit with the Creationist stance that God created the animals at around the same time – why would they happen to exist in distinct eras with clear progressions from one set of fossils to the next?

Answer: On the geological scale, or in other words in the grand scheme of things so to speak, ALL the  species evolved in a very very short amount of time. Remember the entire Universe is about thirteen Billion years old, according to non-creationist cosmologists themselves. With again according to those same non-creationist scientists, our own sun, and our own planet being somewhere between four to four and a half billion years old.

When seen in that scale we along with all the animal life that has ever existed on Earth, which has only existed on Earth for a couple of hundred million years, (according again to non-creationist scientists) did "evolve" or were created, in a very very short amount of time.





2.   I'd asked earlier how creationists explain vestigial organs.  More specifically, why it happens that these vestigial organs happen to have had a purpose in earlier species Evolution predicts were ancestors.  Why would a Creator give animals vestigial organs in such a manner that so conveniently lines up with Evolutionary theory?  Is this Creator actively deceiving us?  And even in organs that do serve a purpose, I'm sure any first year medical student could list numerous organs just in the human body that could be made orders of magnitude more efficient. 

Indeed, many of our physical and mental traits seem uniquely adapted for survival in a hunter gatherer society, which makes absolutely no sense if you prescribe to Genesis, or any creator that would recognize we would eventually become agricultural and industrial.  Evolution not only explains but expects such imperfections, as natural selection is a slow, blind process, the nonrandom selection of random mutations.  But creationist theory has to perform mental gymnastics that reduce to "god works in mysterious ways", or rather "occam's razor can go fuck itself."

If you read the Genesis account you find that God created Human beings to be just that. Hunter Gatherers. Not farmers or agriculturalists as we as a species largely are today. Especially, post, expulsion.

3.   Why don't Biblical creation stories mention Neanderthals and other sentient hominids?  You'd think this would be a pretty major point, that there were once other intelligent beings, presumably also with souls.  What happened to them? 

The Bible (Judeo-Christian) Scripture makes mention of several different types of sentient life out there in the creation.  See Cherubim, Seraphim, Nephilim for example.


4.   Where are Creationism's testable predictions?  It isn't falsifiable – it is based on no observations and is not applicable to any other field.  Evolutionary Theory can be used to explain numerous phenomena in biology, biochemistry, psychology, neuroscience and animal science, while creationism is entirely self contained in that it makes no predictions and no observations.

Wrong again, not only are the scriptures chock full of "observations" about the nature of man, and our interaction with the creator. Which is the primary focus of the book as it is NOT meant to be a geology or astronomy text for example. And it contrary to your assertion, does in fact time and time again make "predictions" many of which can be, have been, and are absolutely "testable" and indeed proven.

See Ezekiel's prophecy concerning the city of Tyr, and then the archeological evidence of what actually happened to that city for example.



5.   Building off of the last question, if, as with most creationists, your primary justification is some variant of the first cause argument, how do you extrapolate this to anything specific in your mythology?  How do you know God created Eve out of Adam's rib, or that he created the plants before the stars?  Where does any of this come from?

I would invite any civil/rational responses.  Thank you.

The scripture doesn't say God created plants before the stars. You ask for a civil/rational reply, yet have made anyone of a number of fallacious, and ill informed assertions already. Such as for example your assertion that the scripture makes no observations, nor predictions. Or the assertion that it makes no mention of other sentient life. To have such a polite and rationale "conversation" with you, you'll first have to do quite a bit more study of those scriptures first so you know what it is you are actually talking about. As given the aforementioned assertions for example, it's obvious you know very little about the creation story/myth/belief as described within the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.
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Solar

Quote from: Darth Fife on August 09, 2014, 12:34:19 PM
Okay, here is the same question asked with a little more sophistication.

You posit that God created the universe and all that is in it. That means that God created the laws which govern that universe. Question: Can God violate the laws which govern the universe which he created?

Your very premise stifles your understanding, you are viewing God in mans simplest of terms.
Everything you see around you, does not exist when attempting to understand God in God's realm.
God is not a man.


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Dr. Meh

Quote from: Darth Fife on August 09, 2014, 12:34:19 PM
Okay, here is the same question asked with a little more sophistication.

You posit that God created the universe and all that is in it. That means that God created the laws which govern that universe. Question: Can God violate the laws which govern the universe which he created?

And here is one for the Evolution/Science Deniers out there.

One of the arguments used by Evolution Deniers is that changing of one species into another has not been observed in modern time, i.e. a lion has always been a lion, and an elephant has always been an elephant for all of recorded history. For Evolution to be vaild, they claim, it must be an ongoing process.

Fair enough.

So, let me ask all of you theist out there.

Does God still speak to his "chosen" people today, either directly or through "prophets"? If not, why not?

The point I'm getting at is this. Most Christian discount the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as nothing more than a "cult" religion started by a 19th Century charlatan. Oh, many, if not most, Christian tolerate the Mormons, but very few think they are truly Christians.

And yet, the founding of the LDS church and the persecutions they faced over the past 150 years is very analogous to that of the early Christian Church.

What makes Christians so damned sure that God didn't decide that mainstream Christianity had drifted away from the true course Christ had set for it, and so he decided to raise up a prophet in the name of Joseph Smith to do a disc format and reboot of Christianity?

-Darth

That's not at all the same question because the first paradox placed limitations on God while the second simply adks if He can violate the natural laws He created. The answer to that is yes. We call them miracles. They don't happen often because if He intervened often, they would cease to be miracles and instead become the norm or the new natural laws.

The other bit about the Mormons is simply an attack and divide tactic to pit one branch of Christianity against the other. Sure, there are plenty of people on both sides of the Mormon debate but dragging it in here serves no other purpose than a thinly veiled attempt to hope to ruffle feathers and further divide Christians based on denomination.

Dr. Meh

Quote from: Sci Fi Fan on November 16, 2013, 02:51:00 PM
By "creationist" I am referring to those who prescribe to a religious creation story; specifically, my question is targeted towards Christian creationists.

1.   If God created humans and animals within a decently small timespan, why don't we ever find homo sapiens fossils from the same era as Australopithecus?  We can see with hominid fossils that they come from different eras, and it just happens that as the dates approach the present, they become more and more similar to us.  It seems quite mightily convenient for Evolutionary Theory that we find a similar trend throughout every fossil hierarchy.  It doesn't seem to fit with the Creationist stance that God created the animals at around the same time – why would they happen to exist in distinct eras with clear progressions from one set of fossils to the next?


2.   I'd asked earlier how creationists explain vestigial organs.  More specifically, why it happens that these vestigial organs happen to have had a purpose in earlier species Evolution predicts were ancestors.  Why would a Creator give animals vestigial organs in such a manner that so conveniently lines up with Evolutionary theory?  Is this Creator actively deceiving us?  And even in organs that do serve a purpose, I'm sure any first year medical student could list numerous organs just in the human body that could be made orders of magnitude more efficient. 

Indeed, many of our physical and mental traits seem uniquely adapted for survival in a hunter gatherer society, which makes absolutely no sense if you prescribe to Genesis, or any creator that would recognize we would eventually become agricultural and industrial.  Evolution not only explains but expects such imperfections, as natural selection is a slow, blind process, the nonrandom selection of random mutations.  But creationist theory has to perform mental gymnastics that reduce to "god works in mysterious ways", or rather "occam's razor can go fuck itself."


3.   Why don't Biblical creation stories mention Neanderthals and other sentient hominids?  You'd think this would be a pretty major point, that there were once other intelligent beings, presumably also with souls.  What happened to them? 


4.   Where are Creationism's testable predictions?  It isn't falsifiable – it is based on no observations and is not applicable to any other field.  Evolutionary Theory can be used to explain numerous phenomena in biology, biochemistry, psychology, neuroscience and animal science, while creationism is entirely self contained in that it makes no predictions and no observations.


5.   Building off of the last question, if, as with most creationists, your primary justification is some variant of the first cause argument, how do you extrapolate this to anything specific in your mythology?  How do you know God created Eve out of Adam's rib, or that he created the plants before the stars?  Where does any of this come from?

I would invite any civil/rational responses.  Thank you.

All of your questions are based on the assumption that the man-made concept of time is the same as God's time. When God first created the Earth, it was shapeless. It wasn't round with 24 hour days as weknow today. A "God day" could have been 10,000,000,000 years for all we know. Elsewhere in the Bible, it mentions that our lives are like a small vapor in the grand scheme of things. Well, vapors last about a second and guven that the average lifespan is about 75 years (currently), that gives furtger evidence that God is not on human time. In addition, God created animals before humans, it seems that God time may have allowed for certain evolutionary processes to take place.

I have three questions for you. Do you understand the difference between evolution and adaptation? Can you explain evolution on a microbiological level? Specifically, address how individual cells can mutate to give rise to complex systems such as the human eye. If one component of the human eye is missing, the whole system fails to work. So how did it develop? With a lens? A useless lens without a retina or the approximately 40 chemicals necessary to make it work? Explain complex systems such as this, please.

Last question: as a neuropsychologist (done with coursework for doctrate, simply awaiting to finish myinternship), I am intrigued by your statement that neurological and psychological evudence contradicts any creationist worldview. Can you elaborate on that?