The Creationist Myth - 500,000-Year-Old Stone Tools, Butchered Elephant Bones Found in Israel

a reply to: Develo

Do you have a source for these graphs?

Actually the vast majority of Christians worldwide don't believe in that creationist crap anymore.

Here's my problem with that. Why does the good book stay the same, but people's beliefs are always "evolving" to keep up with the times(science)?

a reply to: Phantom423

Don't hold your breath!

a reply to: eisegesis

Michael Le Page (19 April 2008). "Evolution myths: It doesn't matter if people don't grasp evolution". New Scientist 198
and a poll from Pew Research Center

Here's my problem with that. Why does the good book stay the same, but people's beliefs are always "evolving" to keep up with the times(science)?

Here is my problem; how is it so hard for people here to understand that regardless of the religion, a creation myth is a myth? And that a spiritual book is about spiritual matters and not cosmology?



Since the beginning Christians knew Genesis was the creation myth of the Jews.

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.
- St Augustine

It's only since 19th century that American Evangelical protestants devolved and started reading everything in the "good book" literally.

And because of that, people on ATS, being mostly Americans, believe Christians read the Bible literally while only 15%, mostly Americans, do so.

Adherence to Young Earth Creationism and rejection of evolution is higher in the U.S. than in most of the rest of the Western world.

Reasons for the higher rejection of evolution in the U.S. include the abundance of fundamentalist Christians compared to Europe.

More on why American Christianity reads the bible in a f*ed up way:
www.britannica.com...



Personally I have never met a young earth creationist outside the US. I think a few radical Muslims are sharing that view too, but I have never been to Iran so I couldn't meet one of them.

If "Christians" really read the Bible literally, how do you explain this?



There's something about your worldviews that doesn't compute, OP.

And for the record, many scientists until the 1960 condemned his theory simply because it came from a priest.

And today it's the most accepted one...


Truly even science can learn a lesson about being dogmatic and having dumb preconceptions

How are such christians able to determine what is and isn't myth?

Do Non-American creationist christians consider the magical jew rising a town of zombies from surrounding graveyards and the other magical elements oasis story as an obvious myth?

If not, why not?

a reply to: Develo

You know, instead of posting a cool looking meme that leaves out much of how the BBT was developed, how about posting a link with the comprehensive story? Your meme makes it look like Lemaitre was battling an establishment of non-believers in the scientific community for acceptance of his theory when in reality opinion was split pretty much evenly between the BBT and the Steady State Theory. Eventually things like quasars only appearing very far away from us led to the scientific community dropping the Steady State Theory and accepting the BBT.

History of the Big Bang theory

From around 1950 to 1965, the support for these theories was evenly divided, with a slight imbalance arising from the fact that the Big Bang theory could explain both the formation and the observed abundances of hydrogen and helium, whereas the Steady State could explain how they were formed, but not why they should have the observed abundances. However, the observational evidence began to support the idea that the universe evolved from a hot dense state. Objects such as quasars and radio galaxies were observed to be much more common at large distances (therefore in the distant past) than in the nearby universe, whereas the Steady State predicted that the average properties of the universe should be unchanging with time. In addition, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965 was considered the death knell of the Steady State, although this prediction was only qualitative, and failed to predict the exact temperature of the CMB. (The key big bang prediction is the black-body spectrum of the CMB, which was not measured with high accuracy until COBE in 1990). After some reformulation, the Big Bang has been regarded as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the cosmos. Before the late 1960s, many cosmologists thought the infinitely dense and physically paradoxical singularity at the starting time of Friedmann's cosmological model could be avoided by allowing for a universe which was contracting before entering the hot dense state, and starting to expand again. This was formalized as Richard Tolman's oscillating universe. In the sixties, Stephen Hawking and others demonstrated that this idea was unworkable,[citation needed] and the singularity is an essential feature of the physics described by Einstein's gravity. This led the majority of cosmologists to accept the notion that the universe as currently described by the physics of general relativity has a finite age. However, due to a lack of a theory of quantum gravity, there is no way to say whether the singularity is an actual origin point for the universe, or whether the physical processes that govern the regime cause the universe to be effectively eternal in character.

Besides, you are using an appeal to authority fallacy. Just because a scientist believes in god doesn't mean he used rational reasoning to arrive at that belief.

a reply to: Develo

There's something about your worldviews that doesn't compute, OP.

And for the record, many scientists until the 1960 condemned his theory simply because it came from a priest.

Read the thread.

This link was thrown at me, why I'm not sure. I never focused on anything but early creationist views. This was my response.

And most if not all were not Creationists.

Young Earth creationism (YEC) is the religious belief that the Universe, Earth and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of God during a relatively short period, between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago. Its primary adherents are those Christians and Jews who, using a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a basis, believe that God created the Earth in six 24-hour days.

Your telling me that all those people took the Bible literally?

If great minds like that took the bible literally, science would still be in the stone age. Look at what it did for stem cell research. Religious beliefs trump science for fear of proving itself wrong and losing control. Not in every case, but some significant ones.

And for the record, I don't dismiss the possibility of a creator. The focus of the OP was on Creationism. If you don't think everything in existence was created in six days or humans were created only less than 10,000 years ago, then you shouldn't have gotten offended in the first place. I think your accusing me of not differentiating the literal definition compared to people's own definition of creation.

Been there done that...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

originally posted by: Prezbo369
How are such christians able to determine what is and isn't myth?

Do Non-American creationist christians consider the magical jew rising a town of zombies from surrounding graveyards and the other magical elements oasis story as an obvious myth?

If not, why not?

Non fundamentalists Christians know the interpretation of the Bible is a complex and though subject. So complex some scholars spend their whole life studying the exegesis of the Bible.

I said "interpretation" because it's obvious to these Christians that the Bible is an assembly of old texts from two different traditions (Jews and Early Christians) with different contexts, different audience, different languages.

These Christian read the Bible mainly to get the spiritual teaching of the guy named Jesus, because it's where they are recorded.

Also since Jesus was a Jew, they can, if they feel like it, expand their reading to the old testament to get a better understanding of the culture of said Jesus guy.



Some (many?) Christians cannot get all this complexity (it's still a big ass book and many cannot read more than a Twilight novel or even a comic book) so they will simply believe whatever the Church or the pastor tells them to believe (so in the case of the Evangelist pastor; a literal reading of the Bible).

But whoever, Christians or not, who decided to actually read the works of the Christians exegetes would see that the literal reading of the most crazy parts of Bible is actually the exception rather than the norm. The Bible is full of allegories, ecstatic visions and parables. Even a child can realize this.



The Bible is still, like since the first days, a spiritual book explaining the origin and story of the Christian spiritual tradition.

To read it as a science or history book means you haven't really grasped what the Bible is about.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
Besides, you are using an appeal to authority fallacy. Just because a scientist believes in god doesn't mean he used rational reasoning to arrive at that belief.

You get this backward.

I wasn't using Lemaitre's case to prove a scientist can believe in god, but to show that Christians in their vast majority don't read Genesis literally as so many on ATS sometimes seem to believe.


It's also funny you mention memes since it's basically the first thing OP posted in this thread but in that case it did not seem to bother you

originally posted by: eisegesis
a reply to: Develo

Read the thread.

This link was thrown at me, why I'm not sure. I never focused on anything but early creationist views. This was my response.

And most if not all were not Creationists.

Young Earth creationism (YEC) is the religious belief that the Universe, Earth and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of God during a relatively short period, between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago. Its primary adherents are those Christians and Jews who, using a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a basis, believe that God created the Earth in six 24-hour days.

Your telling me that all those people took the Bible literally?

If great minds like that took the bible literally, science would still be in the stone age. Look at what it did for stem cell research. Religious beliefs trump science for fear of proving itself wrong and losing control. Not in every case, but some significant ones.

And for the record, I don't dismiss the possibility of a creator. The focus of the OP was on Creationism. If you don't think everything in existence was created in six days or humans were created only less than 10,000 years ago, then you shouldn't have gotten offended in the first place. I think your accusing me of not differentiating the literal definition compared to people's own definition of creation.

Been there done that...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

What do you think is the percentage of Christians who are young earth creationists?

Because all I'm saying here is that basically your OP is addressing only the 15% of Christians (mostly Americans), who read Genesis literally, while the rest don't.

originally posted by: Develo
but to show that Christians in their vast majority don't read Genesis literally as so many on ATS sometimes seem to believe.

I think we all know that. It's called "speaking in generalities" and/or taking for granted that it's obvious who's being addressed.

We don't have to constantly be reminded that "not all Christians believe XYZ!" even though the thread is mixed with Christians who do believe XYZ.

originally posted by: Develo



What do you think is the percentage of Christians who are young earth creationists?

Because all I'm saying here is that basically your OP is addressing only the 15% of Christians (mostly Americans), who read Genesis literally, while the rest don't.

Those 15% of Christians are represented quite vocally on ATS. Obviously, if the thread doesn't apply to you, you can ignore it.

As you can see in this thread, there are plenty of posters on ATS who believe the young-earth nonsense.

a reply to: Develo

The reason I joined this thread so late was because I was a little annoyed at the OP making this into a YEC debate when we could have just as easily talked about the find instead. To hell with stupid beliefs. Entertaining them as ideas only allows idiots to maintain the rationalizations that their reasoning is valid.

These bait threads are useless anyways. I've already made the mistake of trying to bait YECers into a Creationism debate. These threads always end up with a bunch of OECers coming in and getting offended at the shorthand "Creationists" being applied solely to YECers while barely any YECers actually show up to debate anything. This is mostly because a YECer needs to craft an argument around his fallacies to be correct, if their fallacies start off unraveled then they don't have an argument. Thus even if they do enter they quickly leave the thread after a page or two.

Keep in mind, belief in any sort of Abrahamic god while believing science is valid is just a god of the gaps argument.

originally posted by: Develo

originally posted by: eisegesis
a reply to: Develo

Read the thread.

This link was thrown at me, why I'm not sure. I never focused on anything but early creationist views. This was my response.

And most if not all were not Creationists.

Young Earth creationism (YEC) is the religious belief that the Universe, Earth and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of God during a relatively short period, between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago. Its primary adherents are those Christians and Jews who, using a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a basis, believe that God created the Earth in six 24-hour days.

Your telling me that all those people took the Bible literally?

If great minds like that took the bible literally, science would still be in the stone age. Look at what it did for stem cell research. Religious beliefs trump science for fear of proving itself wrong and losing control. Not in every case, but some significant ones.

And for the record, I don't dismiss the possibility of a creator. The focus of the OP was on Creationism. If you don't think everything in existence was created in six days or humans were created only less than 10,000 years ago, then you shouldn't have gotten offended in the first place. I think your accusing me of not differentiating the literal definition compared to people's own definition of creation.

Been there done that...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

What do you think is the percentage of Christians who are young earth creationists?

Because all I'm saying here is that basically your OP is addressing only the 15% of Christians (mostly Americans), who read Genesis literally, while the rest don't.

I used Gallup, you used Pew. Both are inaccurate, but mine is newer and shows a trend. I think that trend contradicts what you're putting forth. There are many that still believe, probably due to being ignorant to science. Some do but wont admit it, also born from ignorance and some have turned Christianity into a relationship rather than an interpretation in order to worship freely and as they see fit.

I never gave "my" thoughts on how many Christians still subscribe to early creationist views. I just brought Gallup's message to support my argument.

originally posted by: Answer
We don't have to constantly be reminded that "not all Christians believe XYZ!" even though the thread is mixed with Christians who do believe XYZ.

Actually I disagree.

I disagree especially BECAUSE the believers in the young-earth non-sense are the most vocal.


Moderate Muslims have lately been reproached for not speaking up more against radicals.


I'm simply doing the same. Christian fundamentalists are the Christian equivalent to radicals and it's good to remind ATS that the majority of Christians worldwide disagree with them. And the opinions about Christians on ATS tell me it's necessary.

If my answers don't apply to you you are free to ignore them too

originally posted by: eisegesis

originally posted by: Develo

originally posted by: eisegesis
a reply to: Develo

Read the thread.

This link was thrown at me, why I'm not sure. I never focused on anything but early creationist views. This was my response.

And most if not all were not Creationists.

Young Earth creationism (YEC) is the religious belief that the Universe, Earth and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of God during a relatively short period, between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago. Its primary adherents are those Christians and Jews who, using a literal interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative as a basis, believe that God created the Earth in six 24-hour days.

Your telling me that all those people took the Bible literally?

If great minds like that took the bible literally, science would still be in the stone age. Look at what it did for stem cell research. Religious beliefs trump science for fear of proving itself wrong and losing control. Not in every case, but some significant ones.

And for the record, I don't dismiss the possibility of a creator. The focus of the OP was on Creationism. If you don't think everything in existence was created in six days or humans were created only less than 10,000 years ago, then you shouldn't have gotten offended in the first place. I think your accusing me of not differentiating the literal definition compared to people's own definition of creation.

Been there done that...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

What do you think is the percentage of Christians who are young earth creationists?

Because all I'm saying here is that basically your OP is addressing only the 15% of Christians (mostly Americans), who read Genesis literally, while the rest don't.

I used Gallup, you used Pew. Both are inaccurate, but mine is newer and shows a trend. I think that trend contradicts what you're putting forth. There are many that still believe, probably due to being ignorant to science. Some do but wont admit it, also born from ignorance and some have turned Christianity into a relationship rather than an interpretation in order to worship freely and as they see fit.

I never gave "my" thoughts on how many Christians still subscribe to early creationist views. I just brought Gallup's message to support my argument.

The Gallup poll is Americans only, and almost no Christians outside the US believe in young earth creationist views, so truly our data say the same things:


A huge number of Americans still believe in a young earth.
Young-earth creationism is an American belief.



Blame fundamentalists and their hold on the US education system.

that is not the age of the earth according to the bible, for like the kajillionith time. the second verse of genesis 1 says the earth became a desolate wasteland. it didn't originally say it WAS a desolate wasteland. the word used was translated "become" and in the past tense is "became" not was. so at some undisclosed time after the formation of the universe, the earth became a desolate wasteland. (without form and void is not the correct translation either. it's tohu and bohu -- desolate wasteland). the first adam were males and females, copied in the image of elohim (a plural word) so they weren't humans they were elohim copies.

good grief people quit quoting the papacy and read the dang thing for yourselves.

originally posted by: Develo



I'm simply doing the same. Christian fundamentalists are the Christian equivalent to radicals and it's good to remind ATS that the majority of Christians worldwide disagree with them. And the opinions about Christians on ATS tell me it's necessary.

What you've actually done is turned the thread from a debate between young-earthers and others about the accuracy of scientific dating methods into a debate about the number of young-earth Christians.

a reply to: Answer

actually, it's worse than that. he's trying to establish a precedent for accusing protestant christians (Evangelicals / Fundies) of being terrorists. his posts on these topics are almost entirely political.

originally posted by: Answer
What you've actually done is turned the thread from a debate between young-earthers and others about the accuracy of scientific dating methods into a debate about the number of young-earth Christians.

Personally I find it more interesting because I have yet to see a single young-earther change opinion based on scientific data, so debates like this are sterile.

Belief in a young earth is a delusion (because contradicting proofs exist) and as such, people who believe in it cannot be reasoned.