My family has never been one to believe in spiritual worlds, ghosts and witch craft. My mum says when anyone says something about being cursed or seeing a ghost " oh you have been watching Harry potter, what curse were they preforming". So I see puddlegum reaction and w4j to this and find them rather odd or maybe just different. You are like "don't mess with witch craft any further" and we are like are they imagining this, making it up or are they a bit mental?.

It is just interesting seeing the different reactions.

Q and A is a great program on the abc in Australia(I am sure wagga and w4j would of seen it). The topics are often related to faith and religion. A good episode consisted of panelists Richard dawkins and cardinal pell. They have full episodes on youtube.

My family has never been one to believe in spiritual worlds, ghosts and witch craft. My mum says when anyone says something about being cursed or seeing a ghost " oh you have been watching Harry potter, what curse were they preforming". So I see puddlegum reaction and w4j to this and find them rather odd or maybe just different. You are like "don't mess with witch craft any further" and we are like are they imagining this, making it up or are they a bit mental?.

A healthy dose of skepticism on most topics is probably a good thing. That said a Christian's belief system is based, essentially, on very supernatural things, including God Himself. As the West has gotten more and more technologically advanced their religious roots have gotten more and more decayed, to the point where if you saw something which the Bible states exist (demons, angels, etc.) and one appeared right in front of you, you may not even know what you're looking at or how to perceive it, although I think with the demon you would definitely recognize things were very, very bad. I've read of missionary accounts from places in the third world that tell of crazy supernatural things that occur when dealing with remote tribes or reclusive natives, oftentimes in some way to impede the missionary from getting their jobs done (possession, people levitating, etc).

If you're a Christian you've been made a permanent home to the Holy Spirit and thus you are able to at least perceive things differently on that matter. Spiritual Warfare does exist, and it's probably best to heed the advice here which recommends leaving that stuff alone because you don't know what you're fooling around with.

I have no interest(or little) interest in spirits etc because of the simple fact that I do not believe in the supernatural. So no you will not see me dancing around a fire chanting anytime soon (or however someone try and wake the spiritual world).

This kind of rings me to Pseudoscience especially Astrology/divination. Talk of star signs makes me cringe. Some people actually believe this stuff is truly going to happen and say well ' The column said this and it actually happened" and don't take into account how many times what was in the column didn't come true.

Most dreams are a jumble of day-to-day rememberings and thoughts. Sometimes if something is troubling anyone they may have the same dream repeatedly, but it is still their brain working overtime.

Those astrology columns I've seen are supposed to be vaguely good advice, which always end with ring such and such a number. It is a good idea to save money and take no notice. I've heard of a Tafe course being suggested for would-be astrologers.

when it comes to dealings with the spirit world I look at three things. The Bible first of course, and the directions, and examples given. Secondly are the experiences of others. These are to be taken with a skeptical heart simply because it is second-hand. Also, unfortunatly there are those who dwell on such experiences, repeating them often, as if to show how "spiritual" they are. Third. I like the statement made by C.S. Lewis, I think it was in Mere Christianity, where he remarked how the devil like two kinds of people. Those who deny he exists, and those who want to get to know him better.
Shadowlander is correct in that a healthy skepticism is a good thing. I have met too many people who accept anything spiritual. But I have also met too many who in denying spiritual matters are a bit too quick to assume the believer to be mentally incompetent.

Just to clear up the definition of theory, as it seems that some people are misusing it (unintentionally I am sure, because the colloquial definition differs from how the word is used in science.)

As used in science, a theory explains an observed group of facts or phenomena.

For the autodidacts, consider perusing the following site, which will hopefully answer the questions or misunderstandings that you may have about evolution.

I have been reading quotes in relation to atheism.

You might have run across this quote before, but in case you haven't:

The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.

I do like the end of that quote "There is nothing more; but I want nothing more" is the feeling among many atheists and some of us don't mind either way. Some think the thought of an afterlife sounds great but do not believe there is one.

If there was something...anything, in the Bible that could support Evolution I think it'd be much more accepted. But because the theory has no Biblical support (and I challenge anyone in this thread or anywhere else in the world to show me *contextual* verses that support it and point at it ) I cannot go with it.

Let me bring up one example of why I have issues with this sort of reasoning.

Genesis 1:6-8:

Then God said: Let there be a dome in the middle of the waters, to separate one body of water from the other.

God called the dome “sky.”

The Hebrew word רָקִיעַ suggests a gigantic dome called the firmament, which was inserted into the middle of the single body of water to form dry space within which the earth could emerge. Indeed, if one goes outside and gazes up at the sky, from their limited perspective on the ground, the sky looks like a dome. This verse would have made perfect sense to Israelites at the time, because it fit their ancient view of cosmology.

Many of Christianity's most famous early authors actually wrote a great deal about the nature of the dome of the sky! Augustine wrote that the dome was solid. Saint Basil wrote that the dome was liquid. Thomas Aquinas counter-argued that no, the dome was in fact solid, and above it was a "region of fire, wherein all vapor must be consumed."

But we know now that the sky is not a dome. This is not a matter of chronological snobbery or bias, this is an objective fact. There is no way for a literal interpreter of Genesis to explain this.

As for evolution...I would think that a possible way to fit implied evolution into the Genesis narrative is to point to the fact that God chose to create the world in 6 'days', rather than all at once!

The environments created on days 1, 2, and 3 correspond to the occupants on days 4, 5, and 6.

Day 1 (light/darkness) -> Day 4 (sun/moon/stars)
Day 2 (sky/sea) -> Day 5 (birds/fish)
Day 3 (land/plants) -> Day 6 (animals)

One could say that God created all the environments first, and that evolution was the process of creating life to fill each of the environments, like liquid metal that changes into the shape of whatever mold it is poured into.

It's certainly not the most intuitive way to explain the creation story. But the literal Genesis interpretation of a six 24-hour day creation just makes no sense whatsoever to me when I try to think about it in physical terms. The entire scenario would revolve around God using magic to sustain everything until he was done on the 6th day because, given the order listed of creation of things, the universe would be in a disarray halfway through the week.

Just think of what it would be like to use a time machine to go back and observe the universe after day 3 of creation. Earth already exists, along with the sky, land, sea, and plants, but not the sun? The plants would freeze! How are day and night even happening? God would have to go through some serious manipulations and contortions of space-time as we know it to make the creation plan work, and this would all be without any conscious creatures around to even observe or appreciate it (birds, fish, animals and humans aren't created until after day 4).

I think the Theory of Evolution is fascinating to read about, and I suppose from a scientific explanatory stance it probably makes a lot of sense, but for years people thought the Bubonic Plague came from stinky air, flies spontaneously erupted from spoiled meat, and the Earth was flat.

I would say a literal interpretation of Genesis is equivalent to the latter 3 latter views you mentioned.

Banking on future scientific revolutions in astronomy, geology, archaeology, and biology to turn the tables exactly in the favor of a particular worldview based on previously invalidated scientific views just seems...unlikely.

Interesting that you brought up Genesis 1:6-8, MfA; I've been pondering that lately. If you look at it as a metaphor, as something intended to convey a degree of meaning and understanding to the ancient people who were hearing it, it's quite intriguing.

Seriously, if you think about trying to explain what outer space is and how it "works" to someone who's never heard of it, never seen footage of an astronaut bobbing around in a space capsule or doing a spacewalk—how would you go about it? What earthly experience could you use to help them understand some of the basic attributes of space and its effect on humans?

In many ways, I think water is a pretty brilliant analogy. It's something that virtually everyone has personally experienced, and yet it effortlessly indicates the airlessness and the weightlessness of space. There's a reason why astronauts train underwater to prepare themselves for low and zero gravity. When God creates the vault between the "water," it seems fairly easy to interpret that as the creation of Earth's atmosphere.

I'm sure I'm not the first person to make that observation, but whatever: I'm adding it to the discussion anyway.

I know many agnostics/atheists will say that the ancients writing Genesis just thought the "vault" must be water because the sky is blue, but I'd be curious to see if other ancient cultures made that same connection or not. Regardless, it's quite interesting to ponder. At this time, I don't have an strong opinion regarding evolution vs. creationism; I haven't researched it enough to form one, so please don't expect extremely intellectual debates coming from me on this topic.

I do think it's important to remember who was writing Genesis, though, as well as who Genesis was originally written for. If a piece of scripture is written in such a manner that it means nothing to the audience or is extremely difficult for them to comprehend, then it's not much of a revelation to those that hear it. The writer may have had a revelation from God about the creation of the world, or even had a vision where he experienced it himself—but he still had to confine it to terms that he could understand, and that which his audience could understand.

Of course, that hardly kept listeners and readers from cultivating wildly varying interpretations of the text, but I challenge anyone to write anything in such a way that ensures it will always be interpreted exactly as the author intended.

For a long time I found myself in a similar quandary. No matter how one tries to work it out Genesis 1 is simply impossible. I believe that God used a mixture of supernatural and scientific means to create the Earth, and I know this because our Earth and all of the Universe itself seems to be governed by natural laws which keep things running like a fine-tuned machine. So, how am I to believe that the Bible is telling me that this is all the result of 6 days worth of work to God? Can God do it? Well, yeah. But we're humans and we're inquisitive and we sometimes tend to want more than just that, so we dig deep and look about. How one comes to a suitable answer for the Creation question is going to mirror how he views those first verses in the Bible.

I do not believe that the Bible was meant to be a "literal" read, and by that I mean that I believe with all of my heart and soul that the Bible is inspired by God, that in it we can find all the the answers to this crazy life around us that we need, but that it does use a lot of poetry and imagery and symbolism too. It does go a bit further in some ways, Creation being one of them, and I believe that if God intended that we were to ascend through a series of scientific somersaults and developing over millions of years through genetic mutation (overseen by God himself and directed) that He is perfectly capable of this...but why not mention it? Why would God say He created a woman from Adam's rib while he slept? Why not just say "And God spoke and a female australopithicus sprang from a nearby bush and grunted, 'hey baby'", etc. It doesn't even hint at that. So then it really comes down to a matter of me taking the Bible's word for it (which is absolutely 100% a YEC account) or I have to take Darwin's ultimate approach, which everyone here understands as Evolution. I have what boils down to three avenues I can use:

A. I still believe in the Bible being the inspired Word of God, but let's be reasonable, God still used Evolution. He just didn't mention it in an obvious way, so if I become a Scriptural contortionist I can twist this verse and that verse around and it'll then mean something which will seem far more scientific than God creating the Earth in 6 days. Because that's just plain impossible. Also the people who were around at the beginning were a bit on the dim side and wouldn't have understood God's methods so they sort of filled in a generic tribal-type creation account like most other religions have some version of already.

B. I don't believe the Bible is the inspired Word of God. It can't be because it's talking about impossible things, and as a reasonable, rational person I have to conclude that the people who wrote it couldn't figure out how the world was created and just made it up. Jesus seems like He was a nice enough guy but c'mon, this spiritual stuff just makes my head spin, and anyone who believes it or that the Earth, universe and Everything was created in 6 days is seriously off their rocker.

C. I believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and that God did exactly what He said He did, and if I want to figure out how He pulled it off I need to figure out the Scientific Processes He used to do it with, given the variable that He obviously used quite a bit of Supernatural means to do some of the work.

I must pick one of the above and adhere to it because, frankly, there's no where else to go on the decision tree. I have picked Option C. I'll be ridiculed for it in many quarters, and as I said earlier, I'm fine with this. I have to pick this or else I risk having to discard a significant spot of the Bible, and in that spot is where we find Creation, Life, Sin, Death, and How We Got Here. If I toss away something in that mix it removes a very essential ingredient out of the equation. If God created everything and found it Good, and God hates Sin, and Sin goes hand in hand with Death, why would God find everything Good? How? This is a philosophical question that no Theistic Evolutionist has been able to answer me on because the cornerstone of that belief is that lots of things lived and lots of things died and because nothing was ever really perfect or "good" it required constant genetic mutation so that the most adaptable (or strongest, etc.) would advance while those least able to adapt would die off. But God found all this ok for billions of years and then decided that when the oven dinged and Adam & Eve popped out everything was good? That's spiritual contortionism, attempting to fit a Man-made belief into a God-breathed one. It doesn't work. It can't work because Man is fundamentally sinful and cannot mesh his sinful ways with God's creation. God cannot abide it, hates it, detests it, and abhors it. This is the very reason why Christ came. God loves us and wants us to be with Him, but we have this gigantic, colossal wall of Sin standing in the way. Evolution is rife with it because it goes hand in hand with death and imperfection. Theistic Evolution, simply on a spiritual/philosophical basis, is incompatible with Scripture.

I searched for many, many years for some answers to the Creation Answer. We'll eventually be told how it all went down, but I think we can reasonably figure out from the clues left behind how it happened. "Well that's not Scientific method. You need to figure out it was brought into existence in the first place". No I don't...I know how it was made, my job is to figure out how. If I walk into the kitchen and discover a stack of cookies on a plate I don't sit there and question how they came into existence. I know already that someone made them. I can reason out by the floury mess on the counter that the person probably started the job there, and I can see by the half used up bag of chocolate chips that they were in a serious mood for chocolate. There's a knife on the counter with butter residue on it, so I can surmise that it or some margarine was used. I don't go back and try and figure out how the kitchen came into being. That I already know. Hint: It didn't take billions of years.

Long story short, I eventually came across White Hole Cosmology. Do I think it's how it happened? It's by far the most credible explanation for Creation that I've found that fits both Science and Scripture. I've yet to meet a Theistic Evolutionist who likes it, but that's neither here nor there...it may not be the exact methodology God used to Make Everything, but it feels pretty close to it. Close enough so that I can line up Scripture and the Cosmology and it makes sense. It gets called "pseudoscience" a lot (code for anything that isn't Evolution) but as I said I think it definitely feels right. It's not testable but much of Evolution isn't either and we have to take much of that on Faith as well, don't we?

I went on a rant there, didn't I? It's been a while.

If God created everything and found it Good, and God hates Sin, and Sin goes hand in hand with Death, why would God find everything Good? How? This is a philosophical question that no Theistic Evolutionist has been able to answer me on because the cornerstone of that belief is that lots of things lived and lots of things died and because nothing was ever really perfect or "good" it required constant genetic mutation so that the most adaptable (or strongest, etc.) would advance while those least able to adapt would die off. But God found all this ok for billions of years and then decided that when the oven dinged and Adam & Eve popped out everything was good? That's spiritual contortionism, attempting to fit a Man-made belief into a God-breathed one. It doesn't work.

Thanks to my compulsive googling, I ran across some articles where people make the case, based on scripture, that there was physical death before the Fall. This is one of them. I'm not sure if you're familiar with these theories or not, but I figured I'd post the link in case anyone was interested.

White Hole Cosmology looks interesting; I'll have to read more about it.

You really have to shoe-horn a biological evolutionary understanding into the creation story. Theistic evolutionists also tend to not take Genesis 1-11 as literal and history. A firm foundation is necessary for the rest of the Christian faith. Jesus, the apostles and others saw those moments as real history, if them, why not us?

Humans are becoming less and less (intelligent, healthy etc.) due to DNA mutations, not improving as the case would be if evolutionary theory were true. This is just in regards to the nature of sin, and its curse on the world. Adam and Eve would've had almost perfect DNA and then, down through the bloodline, it would have lessened and more mutations would occur. The only reason we see science and technology improve at such a rapid pace, is because all of the groundwork discoveries had been made much earlier. We were just building on them.

Deep time is a necessary belief for the extreme biological changes over the ages. The changes had no basis in reality, weren't observable, so Darwin proposed an equally long period of time for biological evolutionary change. The only problem, is he based it on his own imaginings, rather than any true evidence.

Believing in evolution takes far more faith than believing the Bible, as it's written. Biological evolutionary theory is based on ghost lineages. That should tell us enough. It's more the Theory of the Imagination than discernible fact. That it's even considered in light of God's Word is troubling. That many Christians seem to give it more authority than God's Word itself, the final Authority, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is intensely disturbing.

Rose, the link you provided was interesting, but I've heard it all before. I believe it's nonsense trying to justify a non-biblical understanding. Once again, human reason tries to trump God's Word in the Authority stakes. It doesn't work. For one, the Fall happened not long after creation. Perhaps only a week or two later. The whole argument (in the article) crumbles if you believe the creation model. I'm not saying this lightly. I learned some evolution in my schooling. I've thought this through, I think critically about such things, I read widely and ask questions, think about the other perspectives but they just don't add up. Also, God's Word must come first. If we say we believe the Bible, we should use IT as our yardstick for everything. Not human reason. Human reason is good but it's fallible and can only be taken so far. God's Word is pure, holy and infallible. The Holy Spirit's Word to us, God's people, should be our standard for Truth.

Here are my thoughts. Sorry for length, but there have been a lot of posts to address.

The entire scenario would revolve around God using magic to sustain everything until he was done on the 6th day...Just think of what it would be like to use a time machine to go back and observe the universe after day 3 of creation. Earth already exists, along with the sky, land, sea, and plants, but not the sun? The plants would freeze! How are day and night even happening? God would have to go through some serious manipulations and contortions of space-time as we know it to make the creation plan work, and this would all be without any conscious creatures around to even observe or appreciate it (birds, fish, animals and humans aren't created until after day 4).

Well, for one thing, God doesn't just do things so that other living creatures can see and appreciate it. Being the "Alpha and Omega", I don't think He really needs us for anything, even appreciation. He can admire His own work.

Also, it wouldn't exactly be God using "magic". If we're approaching this from a viewpoint where God (a supernatural being) exists, then obviously we'd also be approaching it from a viewpoint where supernatural power exists. And as many miracles as there are in the Bible, it doesn't make much sense to interpret Genesis from a strictly natural standpoint when the rest of the Bible clearly can't be given that treatment.

I can't say anything about the rest of the manipulations/contortions, but as for heating specifically, the Bible indicates that God himself gives off both light and heat. I remember reading somewhere that no sun would be needed in Heaven, since God himself would "light His kingdom". And Genesis also says "the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters". So if God Himself was present, a sun might not have been needed until after He left.

Banking on future scientific revolutions in astronomy, geology, archaeology, and biology to turn the tables exactly in the favor of a particular worldview based on previously invalidated scientific views just seems...unlikely.

True, but the creation account is very vague. It could be interpreted a variety of ways depending on how you look at it. It's extremely doubtful that we know everything there is to know about the birth of the universe; "future scientific revolutions" are pretty much inevitable as technology advances. And while it is doubtful that previously invalidated scientific views will be proven to be "true after all!", I think it's very likely that more theories will arise that still match the Biblical account in ways that, perhaps, we've not considered before.

Seriously, if you think about trying to explain what outer space is and how it "works" to someone who's never heard of it, never seen footage of an astronaut bobbing around in a space capsule or doing a spacewalk—how would you go about it? What earthly experience could you use to help them understand some of the basic attributes of space and its effect on humans? In many ways, I think water is a pretty brilliant analogy. It's something that virtually everyone has personally experienced, and yet it effortlessly indicates the airlessness and the weightlessness of space. There's a reason why astronauts train underwater to prepare themselves for low and zero gravity. When God creates the vault between the "water," it seems fairly easy to interpret that as the creation of Earth's atmosphere.

I am a fan of this post. That's a very good point. And using an analogy so that the people of the time would understand it better is something the Bible does in other places as well. Just look at Revelation.

A. I still believe in the Bible being the inspired Word of God, but let's be reasonable, God still used Evolution. He just didn't mention it in an obvious way, so if I become a Scriptural contortionist I can twist this verse and that verse around and it'll then mean something which will seem far more scientific than God creating the Earth in 6 days. Because that's just plain impossible. Also the people who were around at the beginning were a bit on the dim side and wouldn't have understood God's methods so they sort of filled in a generic tribal-type creation account like most other religions have some version of already.

This kind of sounds like a misrepresented version of what a lot of people here believe.

First of all, if you believe in the inerrency of the Bible, then no matter what else you believe, you're going to end up "twisting and contorting" scripture; or at least, doing something that resembles it to other people. I'm sure that, whenever nonbelievers ask us to explain the "contradictions" in scriptures, what we do to make all those scriptures fit together looks a lot like "twisting and contorting" to them. The problem is, there are a lot of parts of the Bible (especially the beginning of Genesis) that are very vaguely worded, use a lot of similes, symbolism, etc. So when anyone goes into it to investigate possible meanings, or tries to figure out what's literal and what's symbolic, it's going to appear to others as "twisting and contorting".

Second of all, I haven't seen anyone suggest that people in Biblical times were "dim". It has only been stated that they were people of their time. I mean, if you take even a genius from Biblical times, and show them a car, a TV, an airplane, etc., then when they go back and explain it to their people, the way they describe it is going to be a lot different than what a car/TV/airplane/etc. actually is. That is because, no matter how smart a person is, they are not going to accurately describe any technology or scientific process they don't yet understand. If whoever wrote Genesis was given a vision of how the earth was created, then they could have seen it be created a good number of different ways, and still describe it in the way Genesis is written. Because, as I said earlier, it's vague. And (possibly) filled with similes and symbolism. It can be interpreted in a number of different ways.

I have picked Option C. I'll be ridiculed for it in many quarters, and as I said earlier, I'm fine with this. I have to pick this or else I risk having to discard a significant spot of the Bible, and in that spot is where we find Creation, Life, Sin, Death, and How We Got Here. If I toss away something in that mix it removes a very essential ingredient out of the equation. If God created everything and found it Good, and God hates Sin, and Sin goes hand in hand with Death, why would God find everything Good? How? This is a philosophical question that no Theistic Evolutionist has been able to answer me on because the cornerstone of that belief is that lots of things lived and lots of things died and because nothing was ever really perfect or "good" it required constant genetic mutation so that the most adaptable (or strongest, etc.) would advance while those least able to adapt would die off. But God found all this ok for billions of years and then decided that when the oven dinged and Adam & Eve popped out everything was good? That's spiritual contortionism, attempting to fit a Man-made belief into a God-breathed one. It doesn't work. It can't work because Man is fundamentally sinful and cannot mesh his sinful ways with God's creation.

Perhaps God was referring to the Evolutionary process being good because, in the end, it results in creatures that can thrive in their environment. I'm sure there are a lot of other explanations as well. Right now, since Evolution has not been "proven" to the Christian community, it's very easy to reject it due to some loose ends, or say things like "Evolution and Christianity can not both be true." But if it ever came to pass that Evolution was proven beyond a doubt, even to the Christian community, and people started saying "Well since you said Evolution and Christianity can't both be true, and Evolution is true, then I guess Christianity is false!", then you can bet all the Christians would suddenly have lots of possible explanations for how Christianity and Evolution can work hand in hand.

I'm not saying Evolution is true. I'm not saying it's false. But rejecting it because it's a "man-made" idea is a bit silly. Evolution is a scientific theory, and science is not man-made: it's God-made. That doesn't mean every scientific theory is true, of course. But it isn't something to just pass over lightly either, or reject as "worldly". Rejecting Evolution just because there are some loose ends and unanswered questions is possibly even more absurd. YEC has loose ends and unanswered questions as well. Every theory will have them. And as often as Christians use phrases like "Being mere humans, we can never fully understand" or "God works in mysterious ways!", the Christian community should be the first to understand this.

I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, but I don't identify as either YEC or OEC. Because, as much as I see the two sides debate, I'm not sure I can really trust either side. It's all so agenda-based. I don't see the true scientific spirit anymore - that human curiosity that holds knowledge and unbiased research/experimentation as its goal. I just see a lot of people who think they have the absolute truth, and want to prove the other side is absolutely false with no compromises whatsoever, and no possibility that perhaps both sides may have a few pieces of the puzzle. Instead of investigating holes in their theories, and finding out why the holes are there, and what the truth is, everyone (on every side) seems afraid of the evidence, and clings to ideas they were taught like some kind of life saver. If they really had true faith in what they believed, they wouldn't be afraid to put it under a microscope. God doesn't buckle under a magnifying glass, and neither does the truth of his creation. So what point is there in being dogmatic, or fearful of taking a closer look at the holes in your theories? If your theory is correct, it will still stand under the pressure, and explanations will be revealed that will fill in the holes. If it falls, then it is much better to let it fall so you can learn the truth. Whatever the truth turns out to be, it will still be God's truth; so even if there are unanswered questions, rest assured that there are good explanations, and continue investigating! That's what faith is: understanding that, even if our truth is wrong, God's truth will still turn out to be better and brighter than ours, even if we don't understand it right now. Faith is not holding on needlessly to theories and interpretations despite evidence to the contrary.

I am not talking to just Evolutionists or just YECs here, but both sides. I've seen Evolutionary scientists reject evidence for the sole reason that it shot holes in ideas they've believed in for years. Much of the time, they seem more keen on proving their own beliefs right than they are finding out if their beliefs are right. I've seen YECs do the same thing hundreds of times. I saw one scientist (who is a pretty famous Christian, and works for a Christian institute) say that:

1. The Bible is inerrant
2. The Bible says "He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in."
3. Tents are made of literal fabric.
4. Since inerrant scripture says space is like a tent, then that means space is made of a literal fabric.
5. To say otherwise is to deny the inerrancy of scripture.

Now, whether or not space is made of a literal fabric is not my point here. My point is about the attitude and lack of logic of this scientist. What if that scripture just means that the heavens, like a tent, can be lived in? Or what if it's just using flowery prose to describe the way God spread the heavens out, stretching it above our heads, the way tents are stretched above our heads? This scripture may have absolutely nothing to do with fabric. Even if the universe is made of a literal fabric, I really doubt that's what the scripture is talking about. But because the scientist has chosen that interpretation, and has chosen to be dogmatic about it, now if any scientific evidence arises shows the universe is not made of a literal fabric, it will be rejected by this scientist as "unbiblical", whether it is or not. Is this really the logic Christian scientists are bringing to the table? If so, the only way we'll discover anything will be by God's mercy alone, and not because we are doing our jobs responsibly. This shows why being dogmatic about certain interpretations is a very dangerous thing to do. The truth will match what the Bible says. But what we think the Bible says, and what it actually says, can so easily be two separate things.

I have a feeling the truth about our universe's origin is something no one has quite put their finger on yet, though either side could have a few of the pieces. Plus, there are so many other theories out there, some logical, some illogical. I even saw one theory that both 6-day creation, and the earth being billions of years old, could be true at the same time due to time dilation. Maybe God created the earth in 6 days from his perspective, as he flew around the earth faster than the speed of light; while, on earth, billions of years passed. Who knows? But until scientists from both sides are willing to step outside their comfort zones and investigate more possibilities, I don't think we're going to find out much of anything.

~Riella

Shadowlander, I really liked your post.

I agree very much with the way you worded the views of A, B and C except for, as Ithi said, I don't think the humans from 4,000 years ago were dim-witted. They just wouldn't have understood a more 'scientifically accurate' creation story without a collection of science textbooks, which the general public wouldn't have time to study and learn back then in the gritty hunting/gathering/farming lifestyle. (The only reason we can all talk about all these things at a high level today is because our society gives children a mandatory 12-year crash course in human knowledge.)

White hole cosmology sounds like a very interesting theory, but after some Googling, I see scientists and creationists alike panning it for being scientifically inaccurate...so I dunno.

You're right, I don't currently see a way that the death in evolution can be incorporated into the themes of Genesis. I don't see how most things in Genesis 2-11 make any sense in a historical context, either. My Christianity right now is about as soulless as it gets, I suppose. I'm not sure how to really 'mean it' when I say I accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. The only things that tip the scales in my head currently towards Christianity are origins cosmology and the historical Jesus evidence. Not much else makes sense, I feel very much in spiritual limbo-land. So right now I just am basically taking the theistic evolution stance by default because it feels the most internally consistent with what I know.

Humans are becoming less and less (intelligent, healthy etc.) due to DNA mutations, not improving as the case would be if evolutionary theory were true.

I disagree. Humans are not physically evolving because we've completely nullified the need for our bodies to adapt to the conditions of our environments with our tools, inventions and creations. At this point, having knowledge and resources is the key to a human's survival in the modern world, something that can't be passed along in genes.

Believing in evolution takes far more faith than believing the Bible, as it's written. Biological evolutionary theory is based on ghost lineages. That should tell us enough. It's more the Theory of the Imagination than discernible fact.

Well, evolutionary theory is based off of a lot more than that.

But there are ghost lineages simply because we haven't yet found fossils for every last one of the zillions of evolutionary connections of the tree of life yet.

I think the most powerful evidence for evolution in the fossil world is the fact that the only reason we were able to find a lot of these fossils was due to predictions made by evolution and deep time geology! My favorite example is the Tiktaalik.

Neil Shubin was a paleontologist intensely interested with finding an evolutionary connection between early fish and amphibians, wondering how a fish could evolve to survive on land. There was a gap in the fossil record from lobe-finned fish 390 million years ago to clear amphibians from 360 million years ago. So he made a prediction using evolution that there might be fossils of a creature halfway between a fish and an amphibian at rock levels dated to about 375 million years ago (halfway in-between the two dates).

He also deduced that the fossils would have to be found rock previously covered by fresh water, because the lobe-finned fish and amphibians of that time both lived in fresh water. So he searched maps of what ancient continents looked like (developed by the theory of plate tectonics) and found a previously unexplored area that matched his description in the present-day Canadian Arctic. After 5 years of hard, costly searching, he finally found a group of fossil skeletons of the Tiktaalik roseae, exactly the sort of creature he expected to find! In addition to other fascinating features, the limbs of said creature are best described as half fin, half leg.

If that isn't a stunning display of evolutionary theory, the fossil record, continental drift theory, and radiometric dating techniques working in perfect harmony to produce a fascinating scientific discovery, I don't know what is!

Ithilwen, your post was fantastic and you made so many great points.

In general,

I feel like I'm trying to be open-minded by trying to fit evolution in with Christianity, instead of just rejecting Christianity because of evolution (although I know many here wouldn't consider that very open-minded ). The one thing that I see universally across the board with all creationists is their strong, unbreakable faith in the Bible. That's a faith I don't really have right now, so it's very hard for me to mentally consider or accept YEC and all its other forms.

I guess I just need to keep on diligently searching for the truth!