Do you believe Creationism should be taught in public schools

[bedstuy]

But, you would agree there has never been one piece of evidence that shows the earth is thousands of years old or that Noah's Ark happened.  Right?

[bedstuy]

Your pastor is ignorant of evolution.  He says evolution is happenstance.  Nobody thinks that, it's natural selection and genetic mutation over time.  Pure strawman.  If you don't even understand the basics of evolution, how can you criticize it? 

And, as a matter of empiricism, you're church is interpreting the Bible wrong.  Remember, the Bible doesn't come with an instruction manual on how to read it.  There is nothing that says, take everything as literally as you possibly can.  A sensible person would read the Bible, along with context like history, science, etc.

Why not read the Bible in parity with the best evidence of science?  If you believe in God, you believe God gave you the intellect and created all the evidence that you can't help look at and understand.  Right?  So, you either have to take the evidence of the earth as God's statement as well.  Why would God create things like plate tectonics, the fossil record, the ability to determine dates using carbon dating if God didn't want you to find out about them?  Is God trying to trick you? 

If you honestly believe and aren't being purposefully self-delusional, you'll read the Bible in the light that BOTH science and the Bible can be true.  So, like on his second point, you'll agree that humans evolved from apes, but you see the intellect and the conscious mind of humans as the divinely unique aspect of humanity. 

What you're doing is actually extremely harmful to your religion.  Because, if I could prove that the earth is billions of years old and humans evolved, which I can, then the Bible is straight up false.  And, you even admit, there isn't one piece of evidence for Young earth creationism.  Not one piece of evidence.  It's all just misunderstanding evolution willfully and being ignorant, and then saying things like, "kangaroos floated on logs to Australia."

[bedstuy]

Bedstuy, you've made it clear in multiple past threads that your opinion is that the existence of the Christian God is very unlikely in light of evolution/the Earth and the universe being billions of years old.  We agree on this, which is why I reject evolution/the old Earth paradigm.  And my pastor, a great man of God, is not ignorant of evolution; mutations and natural selection is the mechanism by which evolution would occur, but there is no directionality as to how those mutations occur in the first place.  Natural selection can only act on the genes already present, so the instructions coding for different features, like hands, feet, eyes, etc. is truly "happenstance" if evolution were true - the mutations just happened to form them, and natural selection favored those traits only once they entered the gene pool already.

What is directionality?  You're missing the point.  The mutations are random, but the selection is not.  If a gene is helpful to survival, it would be more likely to be passed on.  So, creatures developed a very, very primitive form of an eye, or a leg and that was gradually changed through natural selection and evolution over time.  For example, a primitive eye can just be a cell that recognizes light or dark, which was actually critical in early earth because there was greater UV damage from the sun.  Sensing light was a critical advantage to survival for all of history, as was locomotion or anything else preserved by evolution.  These complaints are just based on ignorance of evolution.

Also, as an atheist, how are you an authority on how to read the Bible?  The Bible itself says "The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit," so it seems silly to take advice from an atheist on how to interpret the Bible (granted, there are many Christian theistic evolutionists, and I respect them and their position, but I do disagree with it).

I have an opinion about critically reading any document, using critical thinking and common sense.  Your reading of the Bible shouldn't be invalidated by critical thinking or looking at other sources.  If you're reading the Bible correctly, everything you see should agree with it.  You're basically saying that you will always resolve that by ignoring science, instead of using science to help you read the Bible.

[bedstuy]

As far as becoming like Bushie, I'm not in danger of failing out of school or becoming morbidly obese at the moment, so I don't think that's a huge concern.


I admit my logic may be hard-line; I'm definitely pretty fundamentalist, though I do respect more liberal Christianity, as espoused by BRTD and Madeline.  The approach others are suggesting to reading the Bible (at equal weight with science or alongside history) is an approach that I just have to reject.  Another thing covered during Bible study was not succumbing to "false neutrality" - i.e., looking at historical issues outside the lens of the Bible.  If you cede a "neutral territory," then you've already lost.  Instead, we should just take the Bible at face value as the #1 authority and then scientific findings can be re-interpreted in light of that.

How pathetic is your worldview if it completely rejects critical thinking? 

And, my point is not about equating anything.  It's textual interpretation.  When there is room for interpretation of the world, which interpretation do you pick?  You say, "face value."  But, what does that even mean.  Face value is taking the word and interpreting them in a certain way.

There's room in the Bible for evolution accepting interpretations and young earth creation.  Both are possible readings.  I'm proposing that if science can clarify ambiguity, you look at science and pick the interpretation in line with science. 

[bedstuy]

A point on the intention of the writers of the Bible.

Suppose you were God and you were writing a book like the Bible.  You might slip in scientific information that proves your divinity , right?  Like, if the Bible contained something like facts about DNA, Newtonian physics or relativity, but was written in ancient times, it would show some sort of miraculous transfer of information from the divine to people.  But, it doesn't have anything of the sort.  So, if you believe it's God inspired, you have to think it isn't trying to be an accurate science book.

And, if you were God and you weren't trying to impress us with your knowledge, what would you do?  Maybe you wouldn't give out a science treatise in ancient times when people were largely ignorant of science.  In ancient times, explaining evolution would have made the Bible less believable because people would have lacked the knowledge to make sense of it.  Maybe the Bible is rather trying to be understandable for the most ignorant, the most uneducated, the least scientific people and understandable for the people in the ancient ignorant times.  Therefore, it makes sense to dumb things down, use metaphor, allegory and narrative to explain it, rather than take pains to represent each fact accurately. 

But, of course, it's all man-made.  It's wrong on science because it was written by ignorant people.   But, if you believe in God, maybe give God a bit more credit as an author who knows his audience better than you know.

[bedstuy]

nobody has seen Evolution happen, and neither will anybody ever see it happen.

Sure we have. There's plenty of examples of evolution that have been observed by humans, antibiotic resistant bacteria and the peppered months being the two most obvious examples. Certainly more solid evidence than those dead eyewitness accounts we have of Lincoln's presidency.

Abraham Lincoln is just a theory!