Arguments for/against young earth creationism

[sp1ders]

Anyone here believe in young earth creationism? What are the arguments for and against?

(I'm a Christian and genuinely interested, please don't turn this into an atheist dominated fight opportunity. I'd like mutually respectful discussion) 😊

@Thegreatestoftheseislove "I'm really not bothered as to the time frame. To me, the most important thing is my life, now, and how I live in my little part of the universal vastness, for this nano-second (relatively speaking) of life that the Lord has given to me. It prevents a lot of brain-ache"

In the dim and distant times when I was briefly at a convent, the nuns made it very clear that it was disrespectful to God not to use the gifts he gave us to the absolute fullest. I'm sure they would have included intellectual curiosity in that stricture...

Phew! Thank the Lord I don't have to take any notice of nuns that I don't know, nor they, me. I trust God, not man (nor woman, nor any gender of choice) and that's good enough for me. 🙂 It prevents a lot of brain-ache, angst, or concern about another human's judgement. It's very freeing.

A very wise person once told me that all the things that may give me the brain-ache, to just file 'em away on the 'why?' shelf and simply trust the Lord. He will reveal anything I need to know in His timing ... and that may not be until I am called home. By then I will have no more 'whys?' or 'hows?' or 'yes, buts'. Not only does it give a sense of freedom, but of His peace too.

@Thegreatestoftheseislove abdicating rational thought in favour of uncritical faith is dangerous. Not on an individual level, but certainly on a societal level. Everything should be questioned.

I think you've read into my post more than I said. I don't waste what time has been granted to me 'sweating the small stuff'. It's all personal, and all relative. This topic is about young earth creationism - and I can only refer you to my original post. I would fine to question everything to be utterly exhausting. I have faith in the Lord and that's enough for me. Others will have different ideas.

Blind faith and acceptance is a very bad thing - to question our existence is part of what makes us human.

@Thegreatestoftheseislove " I would fine to question everything to be utterly exhausting."

Well yes, so would I. But do you really consider the origins of the universe and of life "small stuff"? Frankly, I can't think of anything bigger...

It is huge, I agree, but for me, it's good enough to know that Goddidit.

Nobody KNOWS that any god created the earth though.

Some people choose to BELIEVE it, which is, of course, their choice.

There not yet being a detailed scientific explanation does not mean that some god must be responsible however.

I agree that some god or other is not responsible for Creation. My one-and-only Lord God Almighty, the Creator, did it. You are free to believe otherwise.

However you describe your god you are incorrect when you say you 'know' he did it. The most you can say is that you 'believe' he did it.
This is part of how faith works, belief over knowledge - people 'believe' in god, they don't 'know' in god. Thankfully I AM free, I wish the same for you.

😊Clearly you don't, otherwise you wouldn't have attempted to 'put me right', but I'll carry on knowing what I know, regardless, 'cos I'm free to do so. Or, if you prefer, believing what I believe.

I wish freedom for everyone, you included.
As already stated, you cannot know what a god did (or didn't do), you can only believe what a god did (or didn't know).

💐

Faith is not fact
Belief is not evidence

Clealy that last 'know' on my last post is actually meant to read as 'do'....it should read:

I wish freedom for everyone, you included.
As already stated, you cannot know what a god did (or didn't do), you can only believe what a god did (or didn't do).

No worries, I realise what you meant to say. It's so frustrating when we notice a typo when it's too late to correct it. It's happened to me before and my post ended up reading the exact opposite of what I meant to say. Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I think I got away with it on that occasion. 😎

I think it's wonderful that with modern education most Christians (and others) are coming to realise that the bible is simply not true.

But if modern Christians dismiss young earth creationists as fools for believing the words then they no longer have any basis for believing that 'god' made the world at all or even exists.

It's all very well to speak of faith, but you have to learn what it's about first from the bible before you can believe in it. So now we know it's fictional where does that leave you?

Well, it was recorded at different periods by different men with different experiences, so realising that Genesis was not observed by any human does not mean that the New Testament which was recorded with access to actual witnesses can similarly be discounted.

g

My lovely evolutionary psychology professor said, at the end of her first lecture, "I'm a Christian, any religious people struggling with these concepts can stay behind and chat with me". I'm one of those argumentative atheists but I thought that was nice.

And OP, there are literally a billion pieces of evidence for old earth evolution. The giraffe's neck being my favourite.

Watch 'Life on Earth', the documentary series made by Sir David Attenborough and first broadcast in 1979.

There have been a lot of scientific developments since, but the first few episodes should get you started.

The Genesis-Kings chunk of the Bible is myth. Its authors knew that. They were actively responding to Greek and Babylonian and Egyptian myth that they were familiar with, using their single all-powerful deity, unlimited by place, as a contrast to the multiple gods in other theologies and cosmologies. All readers of the Bible knew that (including the authors of the later prophetic and Wisdom writings of the Old Testament, and the authors of the New Testament.

Myth is different from 'fiction' - it's stuff that often never happened, but it is still true. It existed before 'history' was invented, before 'science' was invented, and is neither bad history nor bad science.

Myth is different from fiction? How so? Is the myth that Finn MacCool made the Devil's Causeway somehow true?

I think that it's more that fiction is intended to entertain and not necessarily rooted in culture, whereas myth is often part of the structure of a society, with the strands of its stories intended to teach lessons and maintain societal cohesion.

Mind you, if the myth about the Devil's Causeway is true than that Finn MacCool was one HOT man!

Finn McCool is more a figure of legend, one individual within a wider mythos.

There are short stories and novellas within the Old Testament that are fiction, constructed like many fictional narratives to make a wider point - Ruth, Esther, Tobit and his family.

In Genesis-Kings the named individuals, many of whom may have been real individuals whose names were familiar from genealogies, were rooted in a familiar mythic structure to illustrate the ongoing and developing story of the covenant relationship between the people of Israel and their god, and the proper foundation of their religious practice as they returned from the Babylonian exile.

Myth, legend, the development of fiction - all complex and sophisticated ways of human beings exploring ideas that exploded with the development of writing in the middle east - Babylon, Israel, Greece - ca 600BC. Treating them as though they are second-rate attempts at writing history or science as we have done in the last half millennium or so misses the point.

People in the past were as intelligent and complex as anyone today, and so were their ideas and their ways of expressing them.

Ok, I'll accept for the sake of the discussion that what distinguishes a myth from normal fiction is that myths promotes social cohesion etc.i still don't understand that this somehow makes the myth true. Truth to me is about reality. In what sense is Finn MacCool building the Devil's Causeway true?