Hands up who believes in creationism/doesn't believe in evolution?

[MrsWobbleTheWaitress]

I know a lot of Christians who believe in evolution, so I kind of had this rather naive idea that people who didn't believe in it were very few and far between. But I just discovered someone I've known a long time, and respect a great deal, doesn't believe in evolution.

So who else doesn't? How common is it?

Grimma - good answer!

Some christians say that onagar (I seem to be saying that a lot right now).

I'm a christian. I still have no idea what "God created evolution" might mean. I'm not likely to say it.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

It's tricky to discuss these things while making it clear which group you are talking to.

This next bit may not apply to you, but your point reminded me of it.

I've mentioned before that many christians will use the total number of Christians in the world as some kind of proof of their credibility. Yet when challenged on a particular bit of their faith will say "oh no WE don't believe in that rubbish. That's the "Catholics/protestants/seventh day car salemen of the holy cross".

In fact each sect is a tiny minority that would be totally disregarded if they were not all flying the same (false) flag.

You could just say "some christians".

Well since every statement with the word Christians in it is in fact referring to a wild variety of conflicting beliefs we could just define 'Christian' as meaning 'somechristians' and save a bit of typing

Or, you could just write "some christians"...

Particularly when you are referring to an area where there are wildly conflicting beliefs. Or viewpoints at any rate. I'm not sure I would use "belief" to describe my position on this issue, because for me this in the Science arena, and therefore belief doesn't really come into it. This is my rational area A creationist might be more likely to speak of belief of course.

If creatisum is true, every living creature would be severly inbred. First of, God only makes one man, and one women (i presume he did this for all other life forms). We populate the world from adam and eve only. Then to make matters even worse, God sends down a big flood and only 2 of each animal can come on borde. Noah can only take his sons, daughters in laws and wife. Our gene pool is rather limated.

No one on earth will ever know the truth untill they pass away. Until then, for all we know there are hundreds of Gods or there is no God.

Onagar - Christians have faith for lots of reasons, but the literal accuracy of the Bible is not the main one for the vast majority of us. So, when something in the Bible doesn't match what science can convincingly explain differently, it doesn't shake our faith to the core - we simply say "We have scientific knowledge which they didn't, their explanation was a statement of what they believed at the time, their explanation can be viewed for what it tells us about their relationship with God at that stage" and we move on.

It's a fairly basic part of the Christian faith to believe that God created the universe - but the mechanism and timescales by which that happened are not core beliefs. So, if evolution is the most convincing explanation, and science shows that a 6-day creation is highly improbable, then fine - we can just as easily believe that God created a universe in which an evolutionary process would result in the development of self-aware beings, rather than moulding them out of clay on day 6.

If you believe that we only believe in God to fill in the "gaps" in scientific knowledge, then you are very much mistaken. I'm quite able to accept that science could explain how everything in the universe happens, but still have faith in the existence of God. I don't need a "God of the gaps", as I don't believe that the way God created the universe would leave any gaps - if there were any, then it wouldn't work!

Well it isn't a core belief for you and some others now, but it would have been. The literal truth of the bible had to be the Christian starting point. Otherwise there wouldn't BE christians. There might be believers in some higher power, but not Christians.

If the original message was genuine and had meaning then changing it would seem to cancel that out. What each generation has now is a new Christianity which is different from that of the last generation and which has 1000s of variations across the world - all different.

So if I asked a christian he'd say his religion was "2000 years old, but built on a foundation that went back to the beginning of time. It is shared by a billion people", but really it's more like 20 years old and shared by a few thousand at most. Maybe less if each of those purporting to share his belief were to stand up and define theirs.

AMIS, you seem to have picked a fairly sensible one and we do could worse than put you in charge of religion's relationship to the state, but still it's a spin-off, not the original and not as far as I can tell based on anything other than that 'inner voice' which people claim guides them.

No, the starting point of Christianity was Christ. The early church worked by word-of-mouth with people who had met Jesus telling others about his teachings. As time went on, some of those who had heard the first-hand accounts wrote them down in the gospels, and there were also letters written from one church to another to clarify the teachings and explain things to those who had maybe picked things up a bit wrong.

Some of the gospels and some of the letters got joined up together into the New Testament. But Christianity was never meant to be about "doing what this book tells you", it was meant to be "doing what your understanding of Christ (some of which you can see from examples in this book) tells you"

Christianity is a religion which is about relationship - between humanity and God - and relationships change over time as we grow and change and our understanding of each other changes. I could easily say my marriage is 19 years old, but my relationship with my husband is new every morning! It's the same marriage, but the relationship has changed with time.

There are many parts of the Bible that are not literal truth, such as in Revelation and in the stories that Jesus told. When genesis was written, it could easily have been metaphorical because science behind the origin of the different species and the means of explaining it were not available.

Evolution as a mechanism is a plausible theory backed up by ample evidence. I can see why believers would accept that this is the likely mechanism that God designed to fill the earth with living organisms.

Relationship implies contact. Some kind of two way communication. If we are discounting the bible and the church (since the next generation will just say the current church leaders were doing their best but got it wrong) that only leaves that inner voice.

That seems an unreliable basis for anything as I've written elsewhere. No one has been able to tell me how one would distinguish a genuine message/impulse from god from a daydream/random thought. Even supposing that there were genuine messages/impulses (though impulses would seem to deny free will) one could be acting on the random thoughts with the best intentions.

boiledeggandsoldiers, that makes sense, but starts from the assumption that god had no part at all to play in telling them who created things. The very fact that they got it wrong means it was simply people writing stories without any knowledge of the truth.

Great posts AMumInScotland.

Onagar - I know you don't believe me, because we've gone round this more than once and not got anywhere, and TBH I don't expect anyone to believe it who doesn't experience it themself - I wouldn't either! But, for me, there is two-way communication, and I am sure that I can tell the difference.

But, what I'm trying to do isn't to convince you that it's true or even sensible. Just that (apart from that one whopping great thing) the rest of my belief system is internally-consistent. I don't see anything odd in having a religion which has changed over time - the Bible was written by people whose knowledge and understanding of God's plan was limited and partial, and has been built on over time. Their understanding of science was limited to what they could observe themselves, so their understanding of how the world came into being was limited to that, and the stories they told about it were meant to convey things like "God made it all", "There was only one God, not many, and not one male and one female one", "It was all God's deliberate plan, not an accident", "We only exist because God willed it so" etc. I can believe all of those things, and so believe the underlying message of the story, without taking literally things like "6 days and each thing created in its current form".

BTW in light of the "some Christians" issue - I will point out that 1) this view of the Bible is that of a liberal Christian and many Christians would disagree about the limitedness of the writing, and 2)not even all the liberals would probably agree with me anyway

I'm not able to find time to post but want to say quickly AMumInScotland I feel like you're doing it for me, great posts

Then I speak for 2 people anyway, if not more!

If you both agree with each other then the two of you may represent the biggest church around

If I thought I could actually talk you out of believing in the two way communication then I'd shut up at once. You're happy with it and I've seen no sign you want to force me into your church or sacrifice any small children on altars for the glory of god.

One final point about the 'knowing it's real' if I can just say this right.

Supposing for a moment that this is real and that the feeling of connection is SO strong that there's no mistaking it when it happens. That still means that lots of people who have not felt it may sincerely believe they have and act accordingly. They have no way of knowing in advance what it's meant to feel like.

Then years later they may get the real connection and think "oh no! all this time I've been acting on stray random thoughts thinking I was obeying god"

Which would be a shame if they'd spent the intervening years blowing up planes because that's what god wants or even teaching in a school that gay people are not real people with feelings.

Even though you will of course continue to believe as you do it's clear enough why 'I' think religion is dangerous.

Oh I agree, there's loads of room for mistakes. In reasonably mainstream churches, people are strongly encouraged to talk to each other, and the church leadership, about the kinds of things they think God is telling them to do in their lives, and the church leadership at least are quite careful to dissuade them from believing they are being told to do anything which contradicts church teaching. But if the church leadership thinks that gays are evil, then they're not going to dissuade anyone from picketing etc if they feel "called" to do that. So yes there can be problems. But I don't think that people in general do anything because their religion makes them feel it is ok, which they would not do anyway without any religion. Some people will beat each other up for supporting the "wrong" football team just as happily after all.

" religion is dangerous "

Please tell me how do I apply this to my life, onagar ?

A little bit of personal testimony here. If it wasn't for my faith, I can assure you I would
not be typing these words right now, no doubt.

Without going into detail, just three months ago I found myself in the midst of personal tragedy. The emotional pain was such as every breath hurt and I had persistent suicidal thoughts of the most serious nature. No amount of secular counseling, well meaning people saying how sorry they were helped my pain, none of their kind and , of course, much appreciated words brought any hope.

It was only through prayer and literally supernatural experience of God's peace I managed to not only survive but also escape depression and now look forward to the future. I still have occasional bad days though nothing like before and they happen when I neglect prayer. Otherwise, my life is full and happy. My husband still has his wife, children their mother. And a happy one too, not depressed and bitter as I'm sure I would be even if pulled through the worst.

Religion, faith is a better word, saved me.
If I was an atheist I would not be alive today, I would have succumbed to despair.
I would have died on your altar of ' survival of the fittest', obviously I am the weak unfit specimen, couldn't pull through horrible grief experience on my own . Luckily, God comes to our aid when we call to Him and I'm here to tell the tale

So indeed how dangerous it is to have faith...

Another one nodding along to AMumInScotland's posts. I started posting my own reply and then realised it was pointless cos she'd said it all already.

Mintcandy, I'm glad you got through it and I hope it's never that bad again.

I could have written MumInScotlands 14:02 post once.

But now I'm equally convinced that the communication that then seemed so real was delusion. A very nice, not particularly harmful delusion, but neverthereless, only true within my own brain.

When that became apparent, the internally-consistent belief system was blown wide open.

No-one can prove if I was right then or now - all this proves is that personal experience is no evidence at all. (As I'm sure MumInScot. realises).

Grimma - I'm aware of the possibility myself. Since I have no external evidence, I know it could just all be misfiring neurons. I don't think it is, else I wouldn't be standing on this side of the debate, but I certainly can't prove that it isn't, and I can see how unconvincing anything I say is to someone who doesn't believe it already.

"that makes sense, but starts from the assumption that god had no part at all to play in telling them who created things. The very fact that they got it wrong means it was simply people writing stories without any knowledge of the truth."

Hi Onagar, I think you missed my point, maybe I didn't phrase it well, but I don't think the writers of the bible got it wrong. If god is all powerful as believers say, it is possible that evolution is the mechanism that he created, but the author of genesis couldn't describe the concept of evolution in a way that a person of that era could understand, or persons of any era before charles darwin's discoveries. I think it is plausible that the seven days of creation are a metaphor for millions of years of evolution.

I have worked with a few scientists and medics that have a christian faith and I believe that this view is quite commonly held.

mintcandy, that's great that faith got you through such a bad time. I hope you continue to feel so sustained.

AMIS and Grimma, yes I am aware of the possibility that feelings of encounters with God could just be my brain doing funny things / or me making it all up to make me feel better. But like AMIS said, I choose to have faith that this communication is real. And I have had several dramatic 'encounters' which I would find very difficult to explain. But they cannot be quantified or proved. That is the nature of it all. I will keep having faith, and possibly being completely wrong and deluded, but within that experiencing a fulfilment that I can't even begin to describe.