Creationist - Evolution Belief spectrum

[Moiraine]

2 minutes ago, knapplc said:

Dead's just dead.  No more me, in every sense of the word. And while that doesn't sound fun, it doesn't bother me much, either.  That's the natural order of things.

 

 

This is definitely not something I've thought about a lot, at least not consciously, but does it ever bother you now since you don't believe in hell, the evil bastards get to just die?

It's a terrible reason to believe in God but... every so often it's comforting.

[Big Red 40]

3 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

I wonder why ceasing to exist scares people. If you don't exist you won't care, and you can't control it anyway if that's the way of things. So why does it matter?

Or is it the thought of going to hell?

I spent most of my christian years trying to get to heaven, and much more importantly trying to avoid an eternity in hell. The latter is/was a terrifying concept to me

[knapplc]

26 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

This is definitely not something I've thought about a lot, at least not consciously, but does it ever bother you now since you don't believe in hell, the evil bastards get to just die?

It's a terrible reason to believe in God but... every so often it's comforting.

 

Not a bit. 

[Moiraine]

9 minutes ago, knapplc said:

Not a bit. 

 

 

What if there are no negative consequences for the person in this life - do you assume they're paying for it internally already and therefore it doesn't bother you, or do you just not care?

I'm not in any way shape or form trying to convince you to believe in God because otherwise Hell doesn't exist. I've just been thinking about karma and hell a lot lately with all the jackasses in the world.

Edited January 17, 2018 by Moiraine

[JJ Husker]

I believe in creation and evolution. I haven't seen anything that tells me one precludes the other and I've looked for it. Now it gets a little more muddled if/when you start taking the Bible literally or fail to realize that religion is a human construct. This is why in religious discussions I try to simply ascertain if a person believes there is some higher supernatural power. I simply cannot fathom that all of this came to be by chance. IMO there has to be a creator, and if they could do that, then I see no reason they couldn't have done it via evolution, limited our understanding of certain things etc. But there are a lot of people who seem to think they need evidence or that they have the ability to fully understand things. I guess I don't have an issue with realizing there may be things we aren't equipped to comprehend.

[JJ Husker]

3 minutes ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

What if there are no negative consequences for the person in this life - do you assume they're paying for it internally already and therefore it doesn't bother you, or do you just not care?

I'm not in any way shape or form trying to convince you to believe in God because otherwise Hell doesn't exist. I've just been thinking about karma and hell a lot lately with all the jackasses in the world.

 

Not to butt in to the convo but I'm not real sure how much I believe in a traditional hell. I was raised Lutheran and converted to Catholicism and of course they both believe in the typical hell of fire and brimstone and eternal punishment. But I've come to believe that hell may simply be spending eternity apart from God. So I guess the idea of jerks being punished in hell for eternity isn't really part of my beliefs so it doesn't bother me. Since I do believe in a God/Creator and he has obviously allowed evil/pain/suffering to thrive in this world, I guess my sense of right and wrong and justice causes me to believe that no all-powerful being would bring us into this mess, provide so little guidance or evidence of him, and then torture the bad ones forever. Seems too sadistic to me.

[Moiraine]

11 minutes ago, Comfortably Numb said:

 

Not to butt in to the convo but I'm not real sure how much I believe in a traditional hell. I was raised Lutheran and converted to Catholicism and of course they both believe in the typical hell of fire and brimstone and eternal punishment. But I've come to believe that hell may simply be spending eternity apart from God. So I guess the idea of jerks being punished in hell for eternity isn't really part of my beliefs so it doesn't bother me. Since I do believe in a God/Creator and he has obviously allowed evil/pain/suffering to thrive in this world, I guess my sense of right and wrong and justice causes me to believe that no all-powerful being would bring us into this mess, provide so little guidance or evidence of him, and then torture the bad ones forever. Seems too sadistic to me.

 

 

One thing I don't believe is that people go to hell over a mistake or where they were born.

One thing I don't understand is why people who do believe in hell think they need to punish people on earth who aren't harming anyone.

Edited January 17, 2018 by Moiraine

[Kiyoat Husker]

1 hour ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

I'm trying to convince my mom to cause an uproar by trying to be an elder at her church. She is 1 of of maybe 20 members of her 800+ attendee church who has been there since its inception yet she can't be an elder because she's not an old man. I know she won't do it though.

 

Yep.  And those that argue against your mom having any say in the church will find many, many biblical passages and precedents to back up their beliefs that God wants men to be in charge of women.  same with anti-gay arguments, same with polygamists with child brides, David Koresh, etc.  Tough to say you are a Christian, and yet don't believe a large percentage of the bible.

[LadyGlitterSparkles]

3 hours ago, Moiraine said:

What does "after his kind" mean?

 

Think of "kind" as meaning "species."

 

Quote

²⁰ Then God said, “Let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens.” ²¹ So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 

 

It's really a direct refutation of evolution. For example, He created whales (some versions of the bible mention whales specifically rather than "great sea creatures") as they are and they gave rise to more of their kind rather than evolving into something new.

Edited January 17, 2018 by LadyGlitterSparkles

[knapplc]

1 hour ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

What if there are no negative consequences for the person in this life - do you assume they're paying for it internally already and therefore it doesn't bother you, or do you just not care?

I'm not in any way shape or form trying to convince you to believe in God because otherwise Hell doesn't exist. I've just been thinking about karma and hell a lot lately with all the jackasses in the world.

 

To the bold:  Sometimes that happens.

 

I make no such assumptions. Sometimes people are unrepentingly evil, and sometimes those people have zero repercussions for their evil. 

 

 

 

[knapplc]

2 hours ago, Moiraine said:

 

 

I'm trying to convince my mom to cause an uproar by trying to be an elder at her church. She is 1 of of maybe 20 members of her 800+ attendee church who has been there since its inception yet she can't be an elder because she's not an old man. I know she won't do it though.

 

45 minutes ago, Kiyoat Husker said:

 

Yep.  And those that argue against your mom having any say in the church will find many, many biblical passages and precedents to back up their beliefs that God wants men to be in charge of women.  same with anti-gay arguments, same with polygamists with child brides, David Koresh, etc.  Tough to say you are a Christian, and yet don't believe a large percentage of the bible.

 

Tell your mom to go for it, and cite Priscilla as an example of women in the New Testament who were leaders in the church (and there are several others whose names escape me).

 

It's interesting that in a male-dominated edifice like the Church, even after nearly two millennia of scriptural interpretation by men, we still have clear examples of women leading the early Church right there in the Bible.  If that has survived centuries of misogyny, think how important their roles must actually have been.

 

There's no reason women can't be Church leaders. 

 

[RedDenver]

54 minutes ago, LadyGlitterSparkles said:

 

Think of "kind" as meaning "species."

 

 

It's really a direct refutation of evolution. For example, He created whales (some versions of the bible mention whales specifically rather than "great sea creatures") as they are and they gave rise to more of their kind rather than evolving into something new.

It's not a refutation of evolution unless you think you understand the original intent of God's words despite thousands of years of oral retelling and hundreds of written translations. Or you can think that God could have meant evolution since an all-powerful, all-knowing being might not be able to express all of the universe and it's intricacies in a few written sentences.

 

Edit: And that's assuming you believe the bible in the first place.

Edited January 17, 2018 by RedDenver

[Moiraine]

57 minutes ago, LadyGlitterSparkles said:

 

Think of "kind" as meaning "species."

 

 

It's really a direct refutation of evolution. For example, He created whales (some versions of the bible mention whales specifically rather than "great sea creatures") as they are and they gave rise to more of their kind rather than evolving into something new.

 

 

As someone else mentioned, it was written by a human to be understood by humans. If God created evolution, and evolution begot whales, then God created whales. It doesn't refute evolution at all.

Edited January 17, 2018 by Moiraine

[Danny Bateman]

I don't get fundamentalist Christians just like I don't get Constitutional originalists. Not that I want to disparage either group, but the philosophy has never made sense to me. The concept of just literally interpreting whatever is in front of you as the whole, complete truth hasn't ever jived with me.

 

FWIW I consider myself #3 in the list (I also considered #4). This was a great idea for a thread Kiyoat.

[Landlord]

5 hours ago, Big Red 40 said:

...

 

On one hand, the scientific history of the planet, doesn't match the Bible version, (by a few billion years) so that raises questions for me.

 

...

 

Either that, or we're just reading the Bible in the completely wrong way. And if you suppose God is real, and science's only bias is towards evidence, data, and empiricism, that's a pretty likely scenario.

 

 

 

5 hours ago, knapplc said:

 

I'm non-religious and the bold is also true for me. I have no ability to prove or disprove evolution or creationism, and no credible reason to believe either one will be proven in my lifetime.

 

It is just about equally preposterous to me that "organic material" coalesced in primordial pools, replicated, absorbed energy from its environment, healed itself, and then went on to grow, change, evolve and become everything alive that we see today.  That's pretty far out there.  It's a pachinko machine on a massive scale, where one of the balls lands on this incredibly improbable spot and poof! life.

 

 

To your first part, I don't think they're comparable at all. Creationism is a top-down, inductive world view trying to make things fit into what people have already decided must be true. Evolution is a model of reality, built to help us understand how things work and also make predictions,  and it also has mountain ranges worth of affirming evidence. There's no such thing as 'prove' in science, not really, but models are always being refined and updated with new discoveries. 

 

To the second paragraph, what you're referring to isn't evolution. At least, it's not the same thing as what I think we're referring to when we say evolution - Darwinian evolutionary theory of natural selection. The origin of life is still a total mystery and something completely unrelated to that model.

 

 

 

On a different note, as a Christian, as a mystic, and as a pragmatist, science and faith (even taken into specific forms like say the book of Genesis) are a beautiful and infinitely mysterious dance. I see no conflicts at all. In fact, science informs so much of how we should read the Bible, and understand the cultural contexts and intentions of it's authors. The Genesis creation is a 'myth', not in the sense of being made up, but in the sense of the point of it being to give a name and an understanding and a face and a differentiating idea of this thing called 'God' to the Israelites, surrounded by other competing polytheistic creation myths. It's also 'myth' not in the sense of being made up, but in the sense of not being concerned with scientific accuracy, rationalism, or literal interpretation. That's missing the point.

 

Also, the whole thing falls apart when the book starts the creation story over and in a completely different order in Genesis 2.

 

Sorry for typing so much, but last thought. It's fine if you believe in creationism. But creationism is not science. There's nothing scientific about it. That's not to say it's stupid or you're a fool if you believe it -- it's just to say that it's a different kind of belief.

 

Here's a fascinating paper on the supposed literary genre of Genesis - https://personal.evangel.edu/badgers/Web/AGTS_Genesis_Science/Waltke_Crux_Genre_Genesis.pdf

Edited January 17, 2018 by Landlord