Let's play devil's advocate and pretend we're all Creationists. What then, is the creation story

Krazysh0t
reply to post by uncommitted

 

It's not exactly a fringe idea here in the United States. Here is an article that talks about the issue and while it initially reports almost half of the population believes in YEC, it whittles that number down to 1 in 10 which is still a considerable amount of people.

How many Americans actually believe the earth is only 6,000 years old?

Last year, Gallup once again reported that nearly half of the country believe the Biblical version of events: “Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.”

“In short, then, the hard core of young-earth creationists represents at most one in ten Americans — maybe about 31 million people — with another quarter favoring creationism but not necessarily committed to a young earth,” Rosenau concludes. “One or two in ten seem firmly committed to evolution, and another third leans heavily toward evolution. About a third of the public in the middle are open to evolution, but feel strongly that a god or gods must have been involved somehow, and wind up in different camps depending how a given poll is worded.”

Thanks for that - scary, but of course the figure is extrapolated from the findings of a poll. Given that the original 6,000 years age arose from amateur geologists in the 16th - 17th century and which have never been acknowledged (to the best of my knowledge) by a major faith, it's a little worrying.

Then again, if you polled 100 people in America, how many would say Elvis is still alive and how would you represent that number across the whole country?

ETA, just had a re-read. It says those people who responded said that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years.". Now, I'm not by any means saying I agree with that, but it's not in the same league as saying the earth is only 6,000 years old.

i always figured that time can vary...i mean, who knows, the time we endure in a day today on this planet could have been equivalent to either years or seconds at another time on this same planet.

i could be wrong, was just humoring the 6000 year subject.

reply to post by uncommitted


Like I said, the initial percentage was about 50%, but that was reduced to 1 in 10 by the end of the article. Personally, any number of people who believe that nonsense is too many. As for your polling question, that all depends on how the poll was conducted. Depending on how you pick you 100 people, you could get a pretty good representation of a large portion of the country, but if for instance you just pick 100 college students at the local community college, you'll probably have some skewed results.

i wonder what kind of people completely believe that..?
I'm religious, and a Christian...but I understand my beliefs, I don't simply blindly follow.
I have reasons for my values, but i certainly don't think people should be spit on for theirs.

reply to post by Jarring


Read one of the many evolution debates on this forum and you will get an idea of what these people are like.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


maybe i will, how did you like my theory of the variance of time over time? Could it explain the 6000 year subject? Make it somewhat relevant? Even if it's way off base?

reply to post by Jarring


It makes sense. It is also pretty much how any Christian who believes in God and evolution believes how they can coexist. Scientifically it could also be possible since time is relative. The closer you are to a giant gravitational body, the slower time moves, as well as the faster you move, the slower time moves. Also keep in mind that everything you witness and see is actually occurring in the past, since the light that needs to travel to your eye for you to interpret what is going on needs to take time to reach you from wherever it was reflected from.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by uncommitted

 

Like I said, the initial percentage was about 50%, but that was reduced to 1 in 10 by the end of the article. Personally, any number of people who believe that nonsense is too many. As for your polling question, that all depends on how the poll was conducted. Depending on how you pick you 100 people, you could get a pretty good representation of a large portion of the country, but if for instance you just pick 100 college students at the local community college, you'll probably have some skewed results.

All true and of course that's the issue with surveys that can always be relied upon to both back up what you believe or completely rubbish it. I guess if a poll was primarily based on responders in the bible belt then you will get a different swing to where they are not.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by Jarring

 

Read one of the many evolution debates on this forum and you will get an idea of what these people are like.

it might even give credit to the evidence of evolution, it happens either really fast or really slow depending on perspective. Creationists might even agree on it if it happened really fast as if God had a hand in it while he was creating. One does work with tools, and sets aside discarded remnants they don't need or use anymore...and sometimes even leaves useless parts on the final creation.

Krazysh0t
reply to post by Jarring

 

It makes sense. It is also pretty much how any Christian who believes in God and evolution believes how they can coexist. Scientifically it could also be possible since time is relative. The closer you are to a giant gravitational body, the slower time moves, as well as the faster you move, the slower time moves. Also keep in mind that everything you witness and see is actually occurring in the past, since the light that needs to travel to your eye for you to interpret what is going on needs to take time to reach you from wherever it was reflected from.

i like it when unlikely relative positions can get along. :3

reply to post by uncommitted


What I like about the article was that they addressed that issue and determined that there was a problem with how the survey questions were worded. They changed up the questions (though unfortunately they didn't provide the new questions) and ended up with different results. The 1 in 10 number makes more sense than the 50% figure, and speaking through personal experience when I took a class on human evolution in college, there were about 1 in 10 of the students who had a problem with the subject material and dropped the class.

Your thread title is awfully assuming. Evolution, certainly as it pertains to us humans, is a THEORY, not any type of solid, proven scientific fact. So, there is no playing Devil's advocate, which also suggests that Evolution is solid, indisputable fact. It ain't.

And I am anything but a Christian and tend to upset them when I start talking about the Bible, so my thoughts do not stem from there.

However, as I age, accepting a completely natural, untampered evolution process from little Lucy to us today, does not make a lot of sense to me. With have as humans, in many ways, run contrary to Darwin's theory. Be it a God or an alien influence, our genes were tweaked at some point, and not tweaked by Evolution. IMO.

All natural laws must be preceded and governed by another all encompassing and unifying law, that which keeps those laws lawful. That unifying law is either God or Chaos.

Yes! And we will partake in intense experiments, using our intelligence to design proof that we weren't designed intelligently!

Makes you think if humans become extinct, and some spaceship lands and populates the planet... and they eventually find some machinery and computers, maybe even some existing robots... Will they theorize biotics evolved to synthetics, since the parts are so similar? Perhaps plastic bags formed naturally after years of heating and stretching?

amazing
So there was God before the big bang and all of nature and science is Gods way of creating. Just my opinion. What's yours?

I am pretty "anti religious" but that doesn't mean I do not believe in what people call "god", or be it "the source", whether this "god" is in fact an entity separate from us or not...I don't even know.

Short: I only reject the COMMON portrait of god religions (Christians mainly) have since I consider those interpretations highly naive, and highly non-satisfactory for me. It's too simple and too much based on human ideas and concepts. "God judging...God "controls", Gid being "the father", God being "an authority", stuff like that. Doesn't fly for a god/all-mighty being, not even remotely.

As for the universe, even as someone rejecting pretty much all traditional religious beliefs I cannot deny THERE IS purpose.
WHY are solar systems forming..why is gravity existing...why exist galaxies?

Why (after the "Big Bang") didn't all matter just fly chaotically about and bothered to organize? Why did elementary forces form which make this universe with its laws possible in the first place?

And so on.

If I assume there is a purpose, this "entity" or intelligence which is responsible for all this is beyond comprehension.

Maybe we're part of a huge organism or something like that.

The other problem I have is with the idea of the "Big Bang" since I do not in the slightest believe in there being one single Big Bang...so this means I don't believe in the idea of "the universe born out of nothing", this is a very outdated idea and some/many creationists still assume that the Big Bang is the origin of the universe...respective they believe that scientists believe that.

Obviously..the idea of one single Big Bang where everything came "out of nothing" is as simplified as the idea of a god which is often merely modeled with human attributes etc...so I reject both ideas as too simple and naive.

Here again, the problem is we only have extreme sides, either "atheists" which reject any such ideas...or Creationists...who believe in a god with human character who "created" the universe in 6000 years and with silly ideas like "he" designed all creatures....like those silly ideas would be necessary to bring in an "intelligence" which in some non-comprehensible way did INDEED have a role in creating the universe. (Short: I am pretty sure that "god" did NOT sit-down and design creatures....neither do I think we were created as the "crown of all creation" in a universe with billions of stars/planets etc. We are nothing but a grain of sand in an endless universe but this doesn't mean there is no purpose).

Great answers and posts guys. This is good.

RedFunfzhen
Your thread title is awfully assuming. Evolution, certainly as it pertains to us humans, is a THEORY, not any type of solid, proven scientific fact. So, there is no playing Devil's advocate, which also suggests that Evolution is solid, indisputable fact. It ain't.

You apparently don't know what the word "theory" means in regards to scientific discourse, because if you did you'd know that you just contradicted yourself.

What is a Scientific Theory?

When used in non-scientific context, the word “theory” implies that something is unproven or speculative. As used in science, however, a theory is an explanation or model based on observation, experimentation, and reasoning, especially one that has been tested and confirmed as a general principle helping to explain and predict natural phenomena.

Any scientific theory must be based on a careful and rational examination of the facts. In the scientific method, there is a clear distinction between facts, which can be observed and/or measured, and theories, which are scientists’ explanations and interpretations of the facts. Scientists can have various interpretations of the outcomes of experiments and observations, but the facts, which are the cornerstone of the scientific method, do not change.

The word you are thinking of hypothesis, that word is more similar to the layman definition of theory.

Keep in mind these are also theories: Gravity, Electricity, Plate Tectonics, Cells, among others.

reply to post by Krazysh0t


Then at that rate, I would move to redefine the 'theory of evolution' to be the 'hypothesis of evolution'

You can't just blanket all forms of long-term, unobservable, assumed evolutions because one of them is a fact. Unless you have large sums of tax money and decide that's what you want people to think...

And also, to properly reply to this thread (my above post was just sarcasm for fun):
If we are all assuming we are CHRISTIAN creationists, then the most you can describe the origins of life is God the creator decided to make everything at one point in 'un'-time. We will never understand how, perhaps even why (even though we have a certain book that helps), and any efforts to trace it back through our limited perception of science will never reveal the complete truth. God felt like it, and here we are. Deep-thinking beings that won't ever be able to accept the gift of life without knowing everything. That is why faith and supernatural exist to try to connect.

Not much of a story, but the truth is we may never fully define truth during our finite existence...

reply to post by uncommitted

I'm not sure about that as I haven't read any scientific theory that doesn't state that at some point this universe didn't exist. The debate (which I'm not sure can ever be answered) is what was there before - absolute complete nothingness, an earlier universe that had itself succeeded one before itself etc. etc.

If Universes existed prior to this known universe existing, it would still serve the point he was making.

reply to post by amazing


Just to play devil's advocate:

Billions of years ago the universe as we know it was created (somehow) by an energy eating god.
This god was a god of pure electrical force, embedded with every mineral containing every element in the universe.
Boom. The god matured, like a caterpillar into a butterfly, exploding out of its dormant cocoon.

Who made this god of energy?
It was always there, floating around the empty emptiness.
It only became a powerful god once it sucked in all of everything from the empty emptiness.
How did it suck in everything?
Well gravity seems to be a force that like other forces, have been with "us" since the beginning.
What made the empty emptiness?
We don't really know, perhaps that is the default "nothing"...

Anyways,
This god erupted and spew life throughout the emptiness causing electricity to begin the process of "weather" and thus life.
Life seems to be the easiest thing to come across if you look in the right places.
Life can be found in the most oxygen lacking regions of our planet to the most toxic puddles of volcanic pollution.

Billions of years ago still, life was exploding throughout all types of environments stretching to all corners of the "universe"

Billions of years ago still, space travel and even intergalactic hyper space travel is a very abundant feature of very modern civilizations everywhere throughout the galaxies.

On our own planet, Earth is producing large populations of invertebrates and primitive vertebrates like fish and eels.

Billions of years ago still, after millennia of space war between races and corporations, economics plays a major role in the direction of major moves.

Gold is the most sought after element in the universe due to its incredible conduction abilities and it non corrosive qualities. Gold is imperative to hyper space transportation.

However, unlike some other elements, gold cannot be created in a lab or artificially in any way.
Gold can only be created during super nova events.
All of the gold found on any planet has been on that planet since that planets creation.
This being said, gold is thus sprinkled about randomly throughout a planets crust and mantle, thus making it incredibly difficult to collect.
It might take 20,000 years to successfully mine all of the gold on a planets surface. This would require physical workers who searched for gold and painstakingly panned and sifted after digging into the ground.

From a corporations standpoint, a 20,000 year job to produce X amount of gold is a tangible task and one that would have most definitely been taken seriously.

So what to do about all of the labor for 20,000 years. What to do?

Somewhere not quite millions of years ago, enter us.

We came about from several genetic projects that took place on our planet by other beings from other worlds.
We were most likely created using DNA from various species of life from our planet. Most likely some sort of chimpanzee and some sort of pig.

There where several projects spanning many thousands of years that took place on this planet. There were african, asian and siberian projects. There were also earlier projects that populated the entire planet at one time. These remnants make up the true natives of central and south america, iceland, northern africa, the middle east, india and mongolia.

All of the projects, spanning almost 80,000 years from the first to the last, where programed with the same "goals".
That goal would be to collect gold and create precious "forever objects" out of them.
As time went by, the more advanced project would come from Europe and take the gold from the older project in the Americas.

All of these different genetic projects that make up who we are today were equally obsessed with gold.

Even in our not so distant modern world, mankind is obsessed with gold.

Today, however, 2014, finds us living on the time that should be known as "mission accomplished" or "game over". The gold is collected and the transactions have been made. We are now useless and on borrowed time as far as the Intergalactic Federation of Peace Loving Galaxies is concerned.