Teh Creationist Thread

[Berzerker]

whats true? Both...

The creation stories describe celestial events at a time the Earth was not in its present form but they use language the lay people could understand and language conducive to storytelling or dramatization.

The Creation story typically comes in one of two forms which are related nonetheless - the watery dragon or giant killed and dismembered by a sky god with body parts becoming the Earth and "Heaven", and the version that describes the Earth as the watery depth or all-encompassing ocean with god making the land from mud/soil brought up from beneath the waters.

In North American mythology god employs an animal adept at diving to bring the "earth" to the surface, other versions describe a mound of land rising up out of the waters. The Bible (Genesis) employs both versions - the watery depth (Tehom/Tiamat, the Babylonian water dragon) faces the "winds" of God and is subdued so that the "earth" may appear from underneath the surface of the ocean.

Notice how Genesis defines "Heaven" and "Earth" - Heaven is the firmament dividing the waters above from the waters below, it is not the universe (in the Babylonian version a name for Heaven is "rakia" meaning "hammered-out bracelet"); and Earth is the word God gave to the land appearing from underneath the waters, not this planet. According to Genesis God did not create the waters, he didn't really create the land either. The language is very important, Genesis says the land appeared as the waters receded into ocean basins. It does not say God created the land, much less out of nothing. But the land did appear as a result of the celestial conflict in which God defeated Tiamat/Tehom, so creation of the land - the dry land that is - was a consequence of "creation".

What does science say? About 4 billion years ago AFTER the Earth had formed, it was struck by an object large enough to change the proto-Earth's orbital characteristics naturally leaving behind debris from the collision. It has been said the asteroid belt cannot be from a destroyed planet because there aren't enough asteroids to form a planet. Maybe the planet wasn't destroyed, just moved to a new orbit. Anyway, the oldest known terrestrial rocks and oldest life forms date back 3.9 billion years to shortly after this collision.

This is, as far as we know, when plate tectonics began. I'm not talking about the volcanic out gassing that must have occurred during the formation of the proto-Earth, but the actual building of continents and the clash of plates - the process by which "land appeared" from underneath the waters. The collision was bad enough to melt or strip older rocks away from the planet's surface (why do meteorites date back 4.5 billion years?)

Another peculiarity about the solar system ties the proto-Earth to the asteroid belt. As the solar wind de-gassed the inner solar system water vapor was pushed outward until it began freezing to be gathered up by any planets. The asteroid belt is where comets begin to develop tails as they approach the sun, "ironically" showing us the site of the collision. The asteroid belt is not only a logical place for a planet to form, it is the logical place for a planet to form very early on.

This logic is in conflict with a theory that claims Jupiter's immense gravity prevented a planet from forming at the asteroid belt. But Jupiter's size was acquired during the same time water vapor was freezing at the asteroid belt, it grew as the solar wind pushed gases out of the inner solar system. It is illogical to argue Jupiter grew large enough to prevent a planet from forming closer to the sun and closer to the point of freezing water vapor. And some of the asteroids show evidence of differentiation meaning they were once part of a larger body, a body large enough to have started or gone thru the process of planet formation. Science supports the creation stories...

I was watching a Nova docu on the Lost Red Paint People, an archaic maritime culture based along the NE Atlantic seaboard 7,500 years ago during a warmer period. There's evidence these people had substantial contact with NW Europeans, the technologies show links so this culture may have ringed the North Atlantic. Anyway, they found a rock from this culture in Rhode Island (I think) with an interesting image on it - 3 symbols lined up from left to right, a star or solar symbol (5 pts I think like a pentagram) on the left, in the middle was a stick man, and to the right was a serpent curved to form part of a circle around the star and human symbols. Not a bad depiction of the Sun, Earth and the asteroid belt encircling both.

I have a question for the "creationists", who created the waters appearing in Gen 1:2? Why does the Bible omit any claim of God creating these waters? The argument I've gotten is that the waters were created in Gen 1:1 (as part of the Heaven which is assumed to mean universe). This argument ignores that Gen 1:1 is described in Gen 1:2-10,11. Did God create Heaven twice? Once in Gen 1:1 and again in Gen 1:7 (or whatever verse)? Why do the waters precede both Heaven and Earth in the description of God's creation of Heaven and Earth?

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by molly bloom


How silly of 'the scientists' not to have had access to carbon dating, computers or mass spectrometers in 1435.

Clearly, God had not yet created them.

It was still busy creating that great project of the 16th Century- the Holy Wars in France !

So much better than a magnetic resonance imaging scanner, say.

Actually carbon dating is only accurate for dates less than 100K years old or so and has nothing to do with dating the Earth.

You need to use isotopes with longer half-life to estimate the age of the Earth.

Just some slight fact nitpicking, carry on.

[Lul Thyme]

Originally posted by Berzerker
whats true? Both...

The creation stories describe celestial events at a time the Earth was not in its present form but they use language the lay people could understand and language conducive to storytelling or dramatization.

The Creation story typically comes in one of two forms which are related nonetheless - the watery dragon or giant killed and dismembered by a sky god with body parts becoming the Earth and "Heaven", and the version that describes the Earth as the watery depth or all-encompassing ocean with god making the land from mud/soil brought up from beneath the waters.

In North American mythology god employs an animal adept at diving to bring the "earth" to the surface, other versions describe a mound of land rising up out of the waters. The Bible (Genesis) employs both versions - the watery depth (Tehom/Tiamat, the Babylonian water dragon) faces the "winds" of God and is subdued so that the "earth" may appear from underneath the surface of the ocean.

Notice how Genesis defines "Heaven" and "Earth" - Heaven is the firmament dividing the waters above from the waters below, it is not the universe (in the Babylonian version a name for Heaven is "rakia" meaning "hammered-out bracelet"); and Earth is the word God gave to the land appearing from underneath the waters, not this planet. According to Genesis God did not create the waters, he didn't really create the land either. The language is very important, Genesis says the land appeared as the waters receded into ocean basins. It does not say God created the land, much less out of nothing. But the land did appear as a result of the celestial conflict in which God defeated Tiamat/Tehom, so creation of the land - the dry land that is - was a consequence of "creation".

What does science say? About 4 billion years ago AFTER the Earth had formed, it was struck by an object large enough to change the proto-Earth's orbital characteristics naturally leaving behind debris from the collision. It has been said the asteroid belt cannot be from a destroyed planet because there aren't enough asteroids to form a planet. Maybe the planet wasn't destroyed, just moved to a new orbit. Anyway, the oldest known terrestrial rocks and oldest life forms date back 3.9 billion years to shortly after this collision.

This is, as far as we know, when plate tectonics began. I'm not talking about the volcanic out gassing that must have occurred during the formation of the proto-Earth, but the actual building of continents and the clash of plates - the process by which "land appeared" from underneath the waters. The collision was bad enough to melt or strip older rocks away from the planet's surface (why do meteorites date back 4.5 billion years?)

Another peculiarity about the solar system ties the proto-Earth to the asteroid belt. As the solar wind de-gassed the inner solar system water vapor was pushed outward until it began freezing to be gathered up by any planets. The asteroid belt is where comets begin to develop tails as they approach the sun, "ironically" showing us the site of the collision. The asteroid belt is not only a logical place for a planet to form, it is the logical place for a planet to form very early on.

This logic is in conflict with a theory that claims Jupiter's immense gravity prevented a planet from forming at the asteroid belt. But Jupiter's size was acquired during the same time water vapor was freezing at the asteroid belt, it grew as the solar wind pushed gases out of the inner solar system. It is illogical to argue Jupiter grew large enough to prevent a planet from forming closer to the sun and closer to the point of freezing water vapor. And some of the asteroids show evidence of differentiation meaning they were once part of a larger body, a body large enough to have started or gone thru the process of planet formation. Science supports the creation stories...

I was watching a Nova docu on the Lost Red Paint People, an archaic maritime culture based along the NE Atlantic seaboard 7,500 years ago during a warmer period. There's evidence these people had substantial contact with NW Europeans, the technologies show links so this culture may have ringed the North Atlantic. Anyway, they found a rock from this culture in Rhode Island (I think) with an interesting image on it - 3 symbols lined up from left to right, a star or solar symbol (5 pts I think like a pentagram) on the left, in the middle was a stick man, and to the right was a serpent curved to form part of a circle around the star and human symbols. Not a bad depiction of the Sun, Earth and the asteroid belt encircling both.

I have a question for the "creationists", who created the waters appearing in Gen 1:2? Why does the Bible omit any claim of God creating these waters? The argument I've gotten is that the waters were created in Gen 1:1 (as part of the Heaven which is assumed to mean universe). This argument ignores that Gen 1:1 is described in Gen 1:2-10,11. Did God create Heaven twice? Once in Gen 1:1 and again in Gen 1:7 (or whatever verse)? Why do the waters precede both Heaven and Earth in the description of God's creation of Heaven and Earth?

So, if you take all creation stories together in a melting pot, abstract all the details and reduce them to a sentence or two that are so vague they could be interpreted any way, they ALMOST correspond to a funky version of what scientists say happened.
Cool.


The kind of analysis you just made is Bible Code-type in my opinion. Point being, the scientifically accepted story could be totally different than it is, and you would still been able to make creation stories fit to it with the same degree of "accuracy" as you just did. Therefore, such "resemblance" is meaningless.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Alexander I
I don't view creationism and evolutionism as mutually exclusive. God could create the world in whichever way he wanted. And just because the Bible says six days, doesn't mean the days were 24-hours. After all, the sun wasn't even created yet, if the Bible is to be believed, so why should Earth-time exist yet? Personally, I believe that the "6 days" were, shall we say "creative periods of time."

I believe that there is a passage in the Bible that says that to God a day may be a thousand years or even an age.

[Nikolai]

It is, but to be fair it's said in a complete other setting.

[trev]

The massive size of the sedimentary rock formations around the earth, many kilometres thick and extending for thousands of square kilometres require water movements on the scale of Noah's flood, including the region of the grand canyon. There is so much of the sedimentary rock formations of the earth and the fossil beds that can be most easily explained by a Noah's flood scenario that it is not surprising that many including myself still believe in the fact of God creating the earth.
The presence of dinosaurs, referred to as dragons in ancient writings being present on the earth is one of the many evidences just ignored by scientists for the co-existence of dinosaurs and humans.

[Barnabas]

I believe both that God created man, and that man descends from primates, little mammals from the dinasour age, the first creature that left the sea to walk on earth, the first cell etc etc

[Berzerker]

So, if you take all creation stories together in a melting pot, abstract all the details and reduce them to a sentence or two that are so vague they could be interpreted any way, they ALMOST correspond to a funky version of what scientists say happened.
Cool.

Even the scientists are funky in your book? No satisfying you, but the science supports the mythology nonetheless. I've read countless creation myths and I'm not the one who has classified them, anthropologists do that. So ask any "expert" you want and they'll back up what I said about the mythology.

The kind of analysis you just made is Bible Code-type in my opinion.

You gonna support your analysis? I supported mine.

Point being, the scientifically accepted story could be totally different than it is, and you would still been able to make creation stories fit to it with the same degree of "accuracy" as you just did. Therefore, such "resemblance" is meaningless.

Oh nonsense, if the science said the world had always existed as it is then the myths would be in conflict because they all claim the world went thru a process of creation.

[Berzerker]

Btw, according to one of the gnostic gospels (Thomas I believe) Jesus told his followers not to worship the creator because it is not something to be worshiped. Easy to see why that gospel didn't make it into the Bible but it does suggest Jesus knew something about the celestial origins of the Earth. Back then "Gods" and Dragons or Giants played the roles of the celestial combatants.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by trev
The massive size of the sedimentary rock formations around the earth, many kilometres thick and extending for thousands of square kilometres require water movements on the scale of Noah's flood, including the region of the grand canyon. There is so much of the sedimentary rock formations of the earth and the fossil beds that can be most easily explained by a Noah's flood scenario that it is not surprising that many including myself still believe in the fact of God creating the earth.
The presence of dinosaurs, referred to as dragons in ancient writings being present on the earth is one of the many evidences just ignored by scientists for the co-existence of dinosaurs and humans.

Ignored by scientists or ancient peoples explaining the existence of giant fossils.

[Adalbertus]

Obviously, creationists open bananas at the wrong side. God created the handle to easily hold the banana when you eat the last bits.

Btw. they even don't know the Bible. There are two creation histories, and they contradict in their order of creation. In the first one (Gen. 1,1 - 2,4), humans are created at the end, in the second one (Gen 2,5 - 2,15) before all other creatures.

Einstein: "God does not play dice"
Heisenbergs less known reply: "We cannot instruct God how to rule the world"
I think one should add: nor how to create it.

[Ben Kenobi]

Actually carbon dating is only accurate for dates less than 100K years old or so and has nothing to do with dating the Earth.

You need to use isotopes with longer half-life to estimate the age of the Earth.

Just some slight fact nitpicking, carry on.

Among other methods. Another was the question as to what made the sun burn.

As I said, it's an interesting question, and well worth the discussion as to how the scientific community established the age of the earth and the universe to be as old as it is. There still is not consensus, and the consensus that there is relies upon evidence in need of considerable refinement.

[Ben Kenobi]

I believe that there is a passage in the Bible that says that to God a day may be a thousand years or even an age.

The general interpretation and the one that I believe in myself is that the days in which Genesis refers to can also be eons, or an indeterminate period of time. The young earth creationists take the idea that the days in Genesis are truly 24 hour periods, and they add up the time to Adam from Jesus using the geneologies and adding up the numbers.

I'm not comfortable in doing so since you are relying on each step of the rung to be accurate. Systematic errors would mess up the calculations at any point, and I don't believe that this was the purpose of the geneologies in the first place. They were constructed to show the links and how they were linked, not to give exact dates between different generations.

That being said we can date many of the events in the bible to a fair degree of accuracy, which improves as we gain archaeological evidence.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Among other methods. Another was the question as to what made the sun burn.

As I said, it's an interesting question, and well worth the discussion as to how the scientific community established the age of the earth and the universe to be as old as it is. There still is not consensus, and the consensus that there is relies upon evidence in need of considerable refinement.

so because X is not wholly defined, we must say that X is false and that Y must be true because it is wholly defined.

wheres the logic in that?

[Ben Kenobi]

so because X is not wholly defined, we must say that X is false and that Y must be true because it is wholly defined.

wheres the logic in that?

MRT, you forget I was a physics major before I was a Christian.

What I am referring to is the use of standard candles that they use to determine distances and thus estimate the age of the universe. Each of them have error margins which when you stack one upon the other leads to larger errors in the final calculation.

To say that scientists have pinpointed these ages is not correct, but they do have a good idea of the order of magnitude, which is really the main issue here.