# Christianity without creationism



## Penis Drager (Mar 8, 2021)

_Preface: Christianity is not the only religion this logic applies to. It's just the most popular... especially here._

So let's say you believe the creation story is metaphorical. You think your god spent billions of years to create human kind in literally one of the most roundabout ways possible. Why?
Why would he do it that way when he could just snap his fingers and make it so?
As dumb as creationists are, at least their version of history makes a bit of sense. Sure, you could ask "why 6 days?" but that still makes a whole lot better sense than billions of years. If the goal was humans, you're smoking crack if you think an all powerful God would take so long to do it.


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## The Fool (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> Why would he do it that way when he could just snap his fingers and make it so?



Why'd he make adam and eve with no knowledge of how to be sapient or independent but then put a tree in their garden that could make them understand reality but told them not to touch it and then punished them when they did? Did he know it was going to happen? So then why even set up the garden in the first place and just directly put them in a careless harsh world already knowing that it's terrible?


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## DumbDude42 (Mar 8, 2021)

>Why would he do it that way when he could just snap his fingers and make it so?
god is beyond time. billions of years or a few days, it makes no difference to god. 
i think that asking "why would he do X when he could instead do Y" type questions about the intentions and motivations of god is generally pointless because god is unknowable and incomprehensible to humans.

but i share your view that dedicated fundamentalists are more consistent about their worldview than secularized modern christians who cherry pick parts of the faith that are appealing to them while brushing aside and ignoring everything they dislike for whatever reason.


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## Not Really Here (Mar 8, 2021)

Why bother with the extra work if you could just write the rules of the universe to unpack itself into your desired end state?


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## No. 7 cat (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> _Preface: Christianity is not the only religion this logic applies to. It's just the most popular... especially here._
> 
> So let's say you believe the creation story is metaphorical. You think your god spent billions of years to create human kind in literally one of the most roundabout ways possible. Why?
> Why would he do it that way when he could just snap his fingers and make it so?
> As dumb as creationists are, at least their version of history makes a bit of sense. Sure, you could ask "why 6 days?" but that still makes a whole lot better sense than billions of years. If the goal was humans, you're smoking crack if you think an all powerful God would take so long to do it.


I think Origen in the 1st century was the first of many to make it allegorical. If God wanted to order something to come about immediately rather than mostly leave barring slight intervention, He would do better than what we have now. We cannot know the mind of God.


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## murdered meat bag (Mar 8, 2021)

The Fool said:


> Why'd he make adam and eve with no knowledge of how to be sapient or independent but then put a tree in their garden that could make them understand reality but told them not to touch it and then punished them when they did? Did he know it was going to happen? So then why even set up the garden in the first place and just directly put them in a careless harsh world already knowing that it's terrible?


was it the eating of the fruit that caused God to banish them or was it Adam blaming God for giving him the woman who tempted him?

the notion of "God made them in the image of himself" means they have an undetermined will and are responsible for their actions. 

and then there's the theological opinion that eden was another realm or planet. 

christianity ends with the return to eden. its kinda fallen by the wayside as fundies focus only on heaven or hell.

Either way the world was only harsh after the fall.


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## MediocreMilt (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> As dumb as creationists are, at least their version of history makes a bit of sense.


In their version of history, the first two people only had sons and yet somehow populated the world.


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## No Exit (Mar 8, 2021)

If you were going to create a universe would you just skip all the cool stuff to get to humans? If you created a place as large as the universe (or creatures as small as humans) why would you just put life on one planet?
Who says he wanted to make humans specifically? Maybe he just wanted to uplift whatever creature earned it or tickled his fancy?
Also, maybe God had to troubleshoot? Just because he's omnipotent in his created universe doesn't mean he is outside of it. But I guess that takes some of the mysticism out of it.
Saying God works in mysterious ways is a cop-out but saying you should be able to rationalize  the mentality of a being that can create a universe is also a bit retarded.

The biggest issue with Semitic Gods from what I've seen is that they're supposed to be omnipresent. A lot of Gods in religions can do anything they want but don't have inherent universal Santa Clause spying powers.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 8, 2021)

The Fool said:


> Why'd he make adam and eve with no knowledge of how to be sapient or independent but then put a tree in their garden that could make them understand reality but told them not to touch it and then punished them when they did? Did he know it was going to happen? So then why even set up the garden in the first place and just directly put them in a careless harsh world already knowing that it's terrible?


I'm not saying creationism makes a lot of sense. I'm just saying that a god that gives two shits about people would probably not take his sweet ass time to make them.

The bottom line is if humans are the goal, why nog get to the fucking point? If essentially 0 effort is required to make them from scratch, why make it look like everything came about naturally?


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## The Fool (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> The bottom line is if humans are the goal, why nog get to the fucking point? If essentially 0 effort is required to make them from scratch, why make it look like everything came about naturally?



Why are you wasting your time posting on this site when you can just skip to the end goal and get a sex change


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## Not Really Here (Mar 8, 2021)

MediocreMilt said:


> In their version of history, the first two people only had sons and yet somehow populated the world.


Genesis 5:3-4​​New International Version​​​When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and *daughters*.


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## Standardized Profile (Mar 8, 2021)

You say "roundabout" as if that means something to an eternal Being, like God was floating around in spacetime laboriously clumping matter together until he had a planet, then assembling molecules together by hand until he had a primitive life form, poking it until it became multicellular, and so on--sighing in frustration that this was _so complicated_ and taking _so darn long._ No thinking person actually believes that. If you suggested such a thing to a classical theist he'd start foaming at the mouth and tossing around volumes of the _Summa_, but even a theistic personalist would be like, "Wait a minute, that's not how God works, that's not how any of this works." You are taking a sort of extreme personalist view that God is like a superpowered human, and his actions should be judged on the basis of what a human would do with magic creation abilities. He's not a superpowered human. He's the eternal and omnipotent being who created and sustains everything in existence. He doesn't need Frederick Winslow Taylor telling him his processes are inefficient.

You also refer to "the creation story," as if there's only one. Genesis has two, the Elohist and the Yahwist. I don't think they're entirely irreconcilable, but they're clearly different stories. The Elohist is more universal--God creates Light and it's good, he creates an expanse in the midst of the primordial ocean and it's good, he creates land and it's good, and so forth. Humans were the culmination of this effort, but all the groundwork must be laid first and he declares all of it to be good in its own right. The second narrative is more anthropocentric and personal, it's an etiological myth for human mortality, the pains of childbirth, and for some reason snakes. It's also a warning that you can learn good and evil through experiencing consequences, but the consequences will be painful for you.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 8, 2021)

Standardized Profile said:


> You say "roundabout" as if that means something to an eternal Being, like God was floating around in spacetime laboriously clumping matter together until he had a planet, then assembling molecules together by hand until he had a primitive life form, poking it until it became multicellular, and so on--sighing in frustration that this was _so complicated_ and taking _so darn long._ No thinking person actually believes that. If you suggested such a thing to a classical theist he'd start foaming at the mouth and tossing around volumes of the _Summa_, but even a theistic personalist would be like, "Wait a minute, that's not how God works, that's not how any of this works." You are taking a sort of extreme personalist view that God is like a superpowered human, and his actions should be judged on the basis of what a human would do with magic creation abilities. He's not a superpowered human. He's the eternal and omnipotent being who created and sustains everything in existence. He doesn't need Frederick Winslow Taylor telling him his processes are inefficient.
> 
> You also refer to "the creation story," as if there's only one. Genesis has two, the Elohist and the Yahwist. I don't think they're entirely irreconcilable, but they're clearly different stories. The Elohist is more universal--God creates Light and it's good, he creates an expanse in the midst of the primordial ocean and it's good, he creates land and it's good, and so forth. Humans were the culmination of this effort, but all the groundwork must be laid first and he declares all of it to be good in its own right. The second narrative is more anthropocentric and personal, it's an etiological myth for human mortality, the pains of childbirth, and for some reason snakes. It's also a warning that you can learn good and evil through experiencing consequences, but the consequences will be painful for you.


It's not the time scale that matters so much here, though I did imply it did. What matters is the steps involved:
"I will create a place humans can thrive in, then I will create humans" is a whole different story from "I will set down a set of laws the universe will follow for billions of years that will eventually lead to human beings coming about on an insignificant piece of rock in an unfathomably large universe."


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## Rust-froth (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> _Preface: Christianity is not the only religion this logic applies to. It's just the most popular... especially here._
> 
> So let's say you believe the creation story is metaphorical. You think your god spent billions of years to create human kind in literally one of the most roundabout ways possible. Why?
> Why would he do it that way when he could just snap his fingers and make it so?
> As dumb as creationists are, at least their version of history makes a bit of sense. Sure, you could ask "why 6 days?" but that still makes a whole lot better sense than billions of years. If the goal was humans, you're smoking crack if you think an all powerful God would take so long to do it.


Do you not have a hobby? Why bake a cake when you can go and buy one?

You're not capable of understanding God any more than an ant is able to understand a human. Should God exist, it's an entity so far removed from ourselves we have no way of understanding how it's mind works. Creationism being true or false doesn't matter, ultimately what is is and what isn't isn't. There is nothing stopping a creationist from studying fossils as a form of holy jigsaw puzzles and being fascinated by the game God left him. Studying God's creation is the original form of science, it's wrong to assume creationism is incomparable with science until you have a method of proving the origin of the universe in a replicating fashion like recreating it exactly in a lab.


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## Prester John (Mar 8, 2021)

DumbDude42 said:


> but i share your view that dedicated fundamentalists are more consistent about their worldview than secularized modern christians who cherry pick parts of the faith that are appealing to them while brushing aside and ignoring everything they dislike for whatever reason.


The Catholic Church doesn't insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible, and I wouldn't consider them secularized.


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## Cat Menagerie (Mar 8, 2021)

Standardized Profile said:


> You say "roundabout" as if that means something to an eternal Being, like God was floating around in spacetime laboriously clumping matter together until he had a planet, then assembling molecules together by hand until he had a primitive life form, poking it until it became multicellular, and so on--sighing in frustration that this was _so complicated_ and taking _so darn long._ No thinking person actually believes that. If you suggested such a thing to a classical theist he'd start foaming at the mouth and tossing around volumes of the _Summa_, but even a theistic personalist would be like, "Wait a minute, that's not how God works, that's not how any of this works." You are taking a sort of extreme personalist view that God is like a superpowered human, and his actions should be judged on the basis of what a human would do with magic creation abilities. He's not a superpowered human. He's the eternal and omnipotent being who created and sustains everything in existence. He doesn't need Frederick Winslow Taylor telling him his processes are inefficient.
> 
> You also refer to "the creation story," as if there's only one. Genesis has two, the Elohist and the Yahwist. I don't think they're entirely irreconcilable, but they're clearly different stories. The Elohist is more universal--God creates Light and it's good, he creates an expanse in the midst of the primordial ocean and it's good, he creates land and it's good, and so forth. Humans were the culmination of this effort, but all the groundwork must be laid first and he declares all of it to be good in its own right. The second narrative is more anthropocentric and personal, it's an etiological myth for human mortality, the pains of childbirth, and for some reason snakes. It's also a warning that you can learn good and evil through experiencing consequences, but the consequences will be painful for you.



Yeah, E is the cosmic sky daddy. J was the relatable earth daddy. E was more or less omniscient whereas J couldn't find Adam and Eve in his own goddamn garden. That part always cracked me up.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 8, 2021)

Prester John said:


> The Catholic Church doesn't insist on a literal interpretation of the Bible, and I wouldn't consider them secularized.


The catholic church is the whore of babylon. Don't mention them as if they are on the side of God.


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## Freya (Mar 8, 2021)

DumbDude42 said:


> >Why would he do it that way when he could just snap his fingers and make it so?
> god is beyond time. billions of years or a few days, it makes no difference to god.
> i think that asking "why would he do X when he could instead do Y" type questions about the intentions and motivations of god is generally pointless because god is unknowable and incomprehensible to humans.
> 
> but i share your view that dedicated fundamentalists are more consistent about their worldview than secularized modern christians who cherry pick parts of the faith that are appealing to them while brushing aside and ignoring everything they dislike for whatever reason.


Every Christian cherrypicks what parts to follow


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## Exigent Circumcisions (Mar 8, 2021)

MediocreMilt said:


> In their version of history, the first two people only had sons and yet somehow populated the world.


They were the first created but it's pretty obvious that they weren't the only. Cain went off and married a woman who wasn't his sister, after all.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 8, 2021)

Rust-froth said:


> Do you not have a hobby? Why bake a cake when you can go and buy one?
> 
> You're not capable of understanding God any more than an ant is able to understand a human. Should God exist, it's an entity so far removed from ourselves we have no way of understanding how it's mind works. Creationism being true or false doesn't matter, ultimately what is is and what isn't isn't. There is nothing stopping a creationist from studying fossils as a form of holy jigsaw puzzles and being fascinated by the game God left him. Studying God's creation is the original form of science, it's wrong to assume creationism is incomparable with science until you have a method of proving the origin of the universe in a replicating fashion like recreating it exactly in a lab.


The point of this thread isn't about how dumb creationism is (it's pretty dumb but whatever). It's that any anthrocentric theology is dumb without a form of creationism.
Deism can still work here, but Christianity can't. If the goal is to make people, a perfectly wise god would choose the most efficient route. "Mysterious ways" is a dumbfuck argument since it only takes the most basic understanding to understand how dumb it would be to take a billion extra steps to do what he could effortlessly do in a millisecond all in one go.


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## murdered meat bag (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> The point of this thread isn't about how dumb creationism is (it's pretty dumb but whatever). It's that any anthrocentric theology is dumb without a form of creationism.
> Deism can still work here, but Christianity can't. If the goal is to make people, a perfectly wise god would choose the most efficient route. "Mysterious ways" is a dumbfuck argument since it only takes the most basic understanding to understand how dumb it would be to take a billion extra steps to do what he could effortlessly do in a millisecond all in one go.


nothing  says it didn't happen in a flash or 6 days or a trillion years. the story is there to help humans understand the beginning of the universe and man's relation to God. I mean genesis has God creating sea animals, then land animals. follows a similar path that evolution asserts. but again, could be in a flash or bazillion years. 

the goal isn't just to make people but to make people in his own image. Why? It is a mystery. and the orthodox church likes to leave such unknowable thing as a mystery because you'll go insane trying to rationalize it.


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## knobslobbin (Mar 8, 2021)

Maybe our skyfather's powers only exist outside spacetime and can be wielded to create universes, but not alter them once they get rolling along.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 8, 2021)

murdered meat bag said:


> nothing  says it didn't happen in a flash or 6 days or a trillion years. the story is there to help humans understand the beginning of the universe and man's relation to God. I mean genesis has God creating sea animals, then land animals. follows a similar path that evolution asserts. but again, could be in a flash or bazillion years.
> 
> the goal isn't just to make people but to make people in his own image. Why? It is a mystery. and the orthodox church likes to leave such unknowable thing as a mystery because you'll go insane trying to rationalize it.


The hebrews, who wrote the old testament (Torah), actually had the philosophy that a written work dies when there are no new ways to interpret it. 
That's not a direct response to anything you said. But it is something I assume you'd find interesting.


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## Rust-froth (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> The point of this thread isn't about how dumb creationism is (it's pretty dumb but whatever). It's that any anthrocentric theology is dumb without a form of creationism.
> Deism can still work here, but Christianity can't. If the goal is to make people, a perfectly wise god would choose the most efficient route. "Mysterious ways" is a dumbfuck argument since it only takes the most basic understanding to understand how dumb it would be to take a billion extra steps to do what he could effortlessly do in a millisecond all in one go.


A perfectly wise god wanting to most effective path would pick the most effective one. A shit posting perfectly wise God might find it fun to see what crazy shit happens and witness in real time. What if God really likes realitys in the form of destruction derbys? You're projecting your desires for God onto God, who is unknowable. Maybe the crazy ride we're on is the most effective way.


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## murdered meat bag (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> The hebrews, who wrote the old testament (Torah), actually had the philosophy that a written work dies when there are no new ways to interpret it.
> That's not a direct response to anything you said. But it is something I assume you'd find interesting.


I can see that, the jews have a way with words. 

there's something similar with  The Greeks called theologoumena which is a theological opinion that isn't dogmatic or goes against dogma. (don't quote me) Eden in Genesis could be a garden on earth, life on mars, an alternative state, or a parallel universe. none of those things go against dogma (necessarily) so it's not wrong to say it could be those, but it's not definitive either. If you're a rational person, you'll mind will break trying to get a definitive answer on non dogmatic questions.  Alien and UFO sightings are demons appearing on earth.


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## Lord of the Large Pants (Mar 8, 2021)

To take a stab at answering that, first you have to understand how ancient creation stories work. When you look at creation stories from that era (Jewish, Babylonian, Egyptian), exactly none of it is about creating existence out of non-existence. They're about creating order out of chaos. It's about getting from primordial chaos to a functioning ecosystem. And as it turns out, evolution is actually a_ pretty damn good way to do that._ It took a rather long time to get there, but... so what?

Now that's not to say Genesis is a coded textbook about evolution. It's not. It's structured as poetry, and it does it a disservice to read it as anything else. But instead of explaining the physical ordering of nature (as covered by science), it explains the proper relationship between God, man, and nature.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 8, 2021)

Rust-froth said:


> A perfectly wise god wanting to most effective path would pick the most effective one. A shit posting perfectly wise God might find it fun to see what crazy shit happens and witness in real time. What if God really likes realitys in the form of destruction derbys? You're projecting your desires for God onto God, who is unknowable. Maybe the crazy ride we're on is the most effective way.


Again, deism doesn't fall to this logic. An uncaring god can sit back and watch things roll. But one that sees man as an image of himself wouldn't bother to use this weird thing called "evolution" to make one.


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## Rust-froth (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> Again, deism doesn't fall to this logic. An uncaring god can sit back and watch things roll. But one that sees man as an image of himself wouldn't bother to use this weird thing called "evolution" to make one.


How do you know? You're again projecting onto something you can't understand. How do you know God is not subject to evolution?


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## Penis Drager (Mar 8, 2021)

Rust-froth said:


> How do you know? You're again projecting onto something you can't understand. How do you know God is not subject to evolution?


Well the bible says God is eternal, all knowing, and all powerful. Seems to follow that he's not subject to evolution if Christianity is true.


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## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Mar 8, 2021)

The Fool said:


> Why'd he make adam and eve with no knowledge of how to be sapient or independent but then put a tree in their garden that could make them understand reality but told them not to touch it and then punished them when they did? Did he know it was going to happen? So then why even set up the garden in the first place and just directly put them in a careless harsh world already knowing that it's terrible?


Because that'd be pretty funny. 
The ultimate trolllllllllolololol


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## Rust-froth (Mar 8, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> Well the bible says God is eternal, all knowing, and all powerful. Seems to follow that he's not subject to evolution if Christianity is true.


None of those things conflict with evolution.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 9, 2021)

Rust-froth said:


> None of those things conflict with evolution.


They conflict with the idea that God evolves. 
The assumption that he wanted humans in the first place is what conflicts with our understanding of evolution.


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## Dom Cruise (Mar 9, 2021)

First of all, time is completely subjective to God, it's not like he had to wait out billions of years like we would, a billion years could pass in a day, so what difference does it make how "fast" he did it when linear time is subjective and there's no "fast" or "slow" to begin with?

And secondly, the Genesis story was always meant to be an allegorical explaining of what happened in a poetic way rather than a literal transcription of events, it literally all boils down to "God created the universe, God created life, God created mankind, mankind fell prey to temptation and achieved self consciousness, possibly by influence from Lucifer, that changed the dynamic of the universe and is why we no longer live in Eden today"

There you go, the exact details of the story are there to simply convey the overall message.


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## draggs (Mar 9, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> The point of this thread isn't about how dumb creationism is (it's pretty dumb but whatever). It's that any anthrocentric theology is dumb without a form of creationism.
> Deism can still work here, but Christianity can't. If the goal is to make people, a perfectly wise god would choose the most efficient route. "Mysterious ways" is a dumbfuck argument since it only takes the most basic understanding to understand how dumb it would be to take a billion extra steps to do what he could effortlessly do in a millisecond all in one go.


Why does God have to conform to your human standards of what makes sense and what is perfection

Or my human standards 

Or anyone's human standards


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## Penis Drager (Mar 9, 2021)

draggs said:


> Why does God have to conform to your human standards of what makes sense and what is perfection
> 
> Or my human standards
> 
> Or anyone's human standards


Okay, God doesn't have to follow logic.
So no need to discuss him in any logical manner because fuck logic as far as God is concerned.
Makes sense to me...


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## Rust-froth (Mar 9, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> They conflict with the idea that God evolves.
> The assumption that he wanted humans in the first place is what conflicts with our understanding of evolution.


God can be made up of cells which evolve inside it. Evolution isn't just monkey turning into man. 

You're projecting a linear concept of time onto a being beyond time and space. Humans are able to manipulate space-time and we're not even close to all powerful. Humans have proven that events in the future can influence particles in the past. We have done experiments changing  the form a particle before it reaches the moment in time which manipulates it into taking that form. If basic bitch humans can do you think God could do?



Penis Drager said:


> Okay, God doesn't have to follow logic.
> So no need to discuss him in any logical manner because fuck logic as far as God is concerned.
> Makes sense to me...


*Tips Fedora* This is 2002 atheist youtube channel levels of salt.


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## draggs (Mar 9, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> *Okay, God doesn't have to follow logic.*
> So no need to discuss him in any logical manner because fuck logic as far as God is concerned.
> Makes sense to me...


*Well yes, actually, but that's not the point*

What you think is logical and perfect someone else will disagree. How do you propose going about showing that your premises are objectively correct and the logic follows consistently from them to a conclusion that is also consistent


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## RSOD (Mar 9, 2021)

Not Really Here said:


> Genesis 5:3-4​​New International Version​​​When Adam had lived 130 years, he had a son in his own likeness, in his own image; and he named him Seth. 4 After Seth was born, Adam lived 800 years and had other sons and *daughters*.


Shit didn't realize a certain african warlord is thousands of years old


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## Rust-froth (Mar 9, 2021)

[{"id":"8497093-0"}]





Penis Drager said:


> Okay, God doesn't have to follow logic.
> So no need to discuss him in any logical manner because fuck logic as far as God is concerned.
> Makes sense to me...


Even if you are entirely logical and entirely correct there is still problems. The universe as we know it isn't perfectly logical, there are mathematical instability to put it in layman's terms. The odds of an event happening due to the instability is obviously insanely low but it does exist. You could turn on your light switch and your chair explodes. There's no logical reason for this to happen but that small instability in the universe makes it possible and inevitable on a long enough timeline (longer than the heat death of the universe). If you had perfect logic and perfect answers you would still have to deal with random illogical bullshit. It's one of the fascinating theories involved in alternative universes, if they exist and every possibly exists then in one universe every time you use a light switch a chair explodes. Not because that universe has a stable connection between exploding chairs and light switches, purely on random luck.


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## 💗Freddie Freaker💗 (Mar 9, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> The point of this thread isn't about how dumb creationism is (it's pretty dumb but whatever). It's that any anthrocentric theology is dumb without a form of creationism.
> Deism can still work here, but Christianity can't. If the goal is to make people, a perfectly wise god would choose the most efficient route. "Mysterious ways" is a dumbfuck argument since it only takes the most basic understanding to understand how dumb it would be to take a billion extra steps to do what he could effortlessly do in a millisecond all in one go.


God's mind wouldn't work like a human's or any living being we're familiar with, so there would be no way to discern his motives. We'd be like ants trying to understand what a human is up to.

Assuming god did have a human-like mind with comprehensible motives, he might have taken the extra steps because it's more fun that way. He could be like a bored kid experimenting with an ant farm.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 9, 2021)

Gimme like 30 mins. I've been drunk/workposting. I'll be home in a few to answer your bullshit more coherently.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 9, 2021)

Rust-froth said:


> God can be made up of cells which evolve inside it. Evolution isn't just monkey turning into man.
> 
> You're projecting a linear concept of time onto a being beyond time and space. Humans are able to manipulate space-time and we're not even close to all powerful. Humans have proven that events in the future can influence particles in the past. We have done experiments changing  the form a particle before it reaches the moment in time which manipulates it into taking that form. If basic bitch humans can do you think God could do?
> 
> ...


The christian God is the alpha and the omega. It's unlikely that he is divisible into smaller components given what the bible says about him. I don't think any theologian would consider "he's made of cell and is capable of evolution" a valid proposition. If God is beyond matter, space and time, you shouldn't expect him to follow the same rules.



draggs said:


> *Well yes, actually, but that's not the point*
> 
> What you think is logical and perfect someone else will disagree. How do you propose going about showing that your premises are objectively correct and the logic follows consistently from them to a conclusion that is also consistent


Eficiancy is basically the goal of logic. You find the easiest way to get from A to Z and cut as much crap in between out while keeping everything consistent. If your God can make a blue thing that's not blue, then there's no point in arguing because logic is all a waste of time here. But if we expect God to act in a logical manner, we should expect that he's gonna achieve his goals in the most efficient way he can.



Rust-froth said:


> [{"id":"8497093-0"}]
> Even if you are entirely logical and entirely correct there is still problems. The universe as we know it isn't perfectly logical, there are mathematical instability to put it in layman's terms. The odds of an event happening due to the instability is obviously insanely low but it does exist. You could turn on your light switch and your chair explodes. There's no logical reason for this to happen but that small instability in the universe makes it possible and inevitable on a long enough timeline (longer than the heat death of the universe). If you had perfect logic and perfect answers you would still have to deal with random illogical bullshit. It's one of the fascinating theories involved in alternative universes, if they exist and every possibly exists then in one universe every time you use a light switch a chair explodes. Not because that universe has a stable connection between exploding chairs and light switches, purely on random luck.


Don't try the quantum woo-woo on me. I'm more than likely more educated on the topic then you (only a little bit of a flex). No matter the interpretation of QM you choose, it's still logically consistent as far as it can go. WHen it loses consistency is when it loses value.


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## Rust-froth (Mar 9, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> Don't try the quantum woo-woo on me. I'm more than likely more educated on the topic then you (only a little bit of a flex). No matter the interpretation of QM you choose, it's still logically consistent as far as it can go. WHen it loses consistency is when it loses value.


It's not logically consistent, that's the entire point being made. You're applying fedora logic to the illogical and claiming to be an expert for whatever reason.

How long until you stick a banana up your butt?


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## Penis Drager (Mar 9, 2021)

Rust-froth said:


> How long until you stick a banana up your butt?


Depends. You subscribed to my Onlyfans?



Rust-froth said:


> It's not logically consistent, that's the entire point being made. You're applying fedora logic to the illogical and claiming to be an expert for whatever reason


In all seriousness, quantum mechanics does follow perfectly logical rules regardless of which interpretation you pick. Shit gets weird when you try to reconcile it with general relativity, which is something that's still being worked on, but just because we don't understand something doesn't make it illogical.


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## Rust-froth (Mar 9, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> Depends. You subscribed to my Onlyfans?
> 
> 
> In all seriousness, quantum mechanics does follow perfectly logical rules regardless of which interpretation you pick. Shit gets weird when you try to reconcile it with general relativity, which is something that's still being worked on, but just because we don't understand something doesn't make it illogical.


Having the universe work in 2 completely different ways because of a scale difference is illogical. It's like water not being wet if you put it in a glass. We're off topic though.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 9, 2021)

Rust-froth said:


> Having the universe work in 2 completely different ways because of a scale difference is illogical. It's like water not being wet if you put it in a glass. We're off topic though.


This isn't too far off topic I think. 
We're talking about the nature of the universe in a thread about the nature of God. I don't think I'm smoking too much crack in saying that these topics go hand-in-hand. 
Either way: do you even know what the contradictions between QM and GR are? They go much deeper than "the universe work in 2 completely different ways because of a scale."


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## Quiet Guy (Mar 9, 2021)

In terms of the nature of God, consider the following points:

God is eternal; this means that either an infinite amount of time has passed for Him or that He exists outside of time, neither of which really makes sense to me. You also run into the same problem with time itself, so a secular worldview doesn't seem to solve the problem, although perhaps there might be some kind of physical explanation for existing outside of time that would apply to both scenarios.

God is more powerful than the angels; in Isaiah 6:2, they even shield their faces from His glory:
"Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew."

All things considered, it's likely God could perform logically impossible feats if He so chose.



knobslobbin said:


> Maybe our skyfather's powers only exist outside spacetime and can be wielded to create universes, but not alter them once they get rolling along.


I think it may be fairly likely that God doesn't outright violate the laws of nature. The Bible calls Him a God of order. With that said, while I think He (and the angels) may take advantage of certain properties of nature, I think God (but not necessarily angels) could outright violate the laws of nature, especially since He made them in the first place.



Dom Cruise said:


> First of all, time is completely subjective to God, it's not like he had to wait out billions of years like we would, a billion years could pass in a day, so what difference does it make how "fast" he did it when linear time is subjective and there's no "fast" or "slow" to begin with?
> 
> And secondly, the Genesis story was always meant to be an allegorical explaining of what happened in a poetic way rather than a literal transcription of events, it literally all boils down to "God created the universe, God created life, God created mankind, mankind fell prey to temptation and achieved self consciousness, possibly by influence from Lucifer, that changed the dynamic of the universe and is why we no longer live in Eden today"
> 
> There you go, the exact details of the story are there to simply convey the overall message.


Why do you think the Genesis was meant to be allegorical? Also, if how would evolution occur in a world that would appear to be without death? If the story were allegorical wouldn't that mean that God created the world in a "fallen" state without Adam and Eve eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

In terms of Creationism, there are issues with the reliability with carbon dating for example. The firmament and possibly a stronger magnetic field could have inhibited carbon-14 creation by helping prevent cosmic radiation from reaching Earth. Here is a link if you're interested: https://answersingenesis.org/geology/carbon-14/doesnt-carbon-14-dating-disprove-the-bible/. It mentions that Libby, the father of carbon dating, assumed that his measurement that seemed to indicate that the ratio of carbon isotopes was out of equilibrium (which could point to a young Earth, since an older Earth should, in theory have had enough time for the ratios to equilibrate), was due to error, but I haven't managed to check how far out of equilibrium it supposedly was.

I do kind of believe in the Big Bang, since there was light on the first day without celestial bodies, and I believe a large amount of light was present after the Big Bang. Also thanks to relativity, the time frame is a bit more nebulous, so 7 days on Earth could correspond to a substantially different time for the rest of the universe if I'm not mistaken, but I'm not able to calculate how different it could be.


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## murdered meat bag (Mar 10, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> The christian God is the alpha and the omega. It's unlikely that he is divisible into smaller components given what the bible says about him. I don't think any theologian would consider "he's made of cell and is capable of evolution" a valid proposition. If God is beyond matter, space and time, you shouldn't expect him to follow the same rules.


Read up on Gregory Palamas and the essence and energies of God. Palamas explains how there are 2 parts of God, the unknowable essence and the knowable energies. there's also the trinity.

jesus is made up of cells as he is a human
fhe incarnation is important in christianity.




Penis Drager said:


> Eficiancy is basically the goal of logic. You find the easiest way to get from A to Z and cut as much crap in between out while keeping everything consistent. If your God can make a blue thing that's not blue, then there's no point in arguing because logic is all a waste of time here. But if we expect God to act in a logical manner, we should expect that he's gonna achieve his goals in the most efficient way he can.


God cant make squared circles or make humans with free will that always reject evil.

as for making a blue thing not blue, it might as well be a semantic argument. you need a new name for not-blue blue, maybe Red or yellow.


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## Zero Day Defense (Mar 10, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> As dumb as creationists are, at least their version of history makes a bit of sense. Sure, you could ask "why 6 days?" but that still makes a whole lot better sense than billions of years.


It's functionally equivalent. "Why six days?" "Why six billion years?" "Why instantaneously?"

Ultimately, it's because He wanted to. I don't dwell the specific mechanics of creation nearly as much as I do the fact that He created the cosmos out of chaos and put humans at the apex of creation, as well as the fact that the fall of man also meant creation fell for want of a ruler. I mean, the reading of the creation narrative (as well as others) principally for its theological truths was the standard procedure until, I reckon, the 18th century or so with the Fundamentalists.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Mar 10, 2021)

Quiet Guy said:


> In terms of Creationism, there are issues with the reliability with carbon dating for example. The firmament and possibly a stronger magnetic field could have inhibited carbon-14 creation by helping prevent cosmic radiation from reaching Earth. Here is a link if you're interested: https://answersingenesis.org/geology/carbon-14/doesnt-carbon-14-dating-disprove-the-bible/. It mentions that Libby, the father of carbon dating, assumed that his measurement that seemed to indicate that the ratio of carbon isotopes was out of equilibrium (which could point to a young Earth, since an older Earth should, in theory have had enough time for the ratios to equilibrate), was due to error, but I haven't managed to check how far out of equilibrium it supposedly was.


The only people who like to nitpick carbon dating are creationists who've copied their talking points from other creationists. If they actually bothered to research the subject, they'd know that "carbon dating" isn't even what's used to establish the age of most fossils, since carbon has a relatively short half-life. The article you're citing even admits this, and it's not a credible source either: Answers in Genesis is a thoroughly disreputable organization as far as the scientific community is concerned, and outside of science is perhaps mostly notable for building that moronic Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky.

The ultimate problem with pseudoscientific beliefs such as young-Earth creationism is that once you measure them up to the available evidence, the whole thing becomes a house of cards. In reality, you can't just alter one important scientific conclusion without multiple others also being affected, and this is perhaps also the greatest irony with such beliefs, since they ostensibly attempt to invite skepticism, but in the process fail to withstand it themselves.

Take radiometric dating for instance: if there really was the massive discrepancies which creationists claim exist, why does the science work so well? How were we able to build MRI machines and nuclear bombs if our understanding of radioactive decay was allegedly so flawed? Moreover, why does the data provided by radiometric dating accurately correspond to the timescales suggested by cosmic inflation and the expansion of the universe, and why does it accurately fit with the physical evidence we have: such as the location of fossils within the stratigraphic column, and the comprehensive phylogenetic databases we've compiled which accurately fit with the fossil record? Think about it honestly, and the whole objection falls apart.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 12, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> "carbon dating" isn't even what's used to establish the age of most fossils, since carbon has a relatively short half-life.


The carbon dating thing is actually really interesting and goes beyond just the short half life:
If the problem were just half-life, carbon dating could go back about 100,000 years. But we can't typically use it beyond about 50,000 because it's a _very _finicky dating method. C14 is produced primarily through solar radiation interacting with nitrogen. Variation in solar radiance results in variation in C14 concentration in the atmosphere (this is actually a common creationist argument for why it supposedly can't work). Not only that, but aquatic life is using "old" carbon because they aren't getting it directly from the atmosphere (known as "the reservoir effect" and it's the cause of another creationist trope about live penguins being carbon dated to 800 years or so). And then there's the fact that C14 levels are different in the northern and southern hemispheres, which is related to the coriolis effect. There's other shit that can skew the data but those are the big three.
As a result, we construct calibration curves by using other dating methods to establish how much C14 is present in a sample of that age in that environment. Dendrochronolgy (literally tree rings) is one way of doing this since we can know exactly how old the sample is and use the carbon present to establish a very precise curve. But this only takes us back a little over 12,000 years. To reach the 50,000 year mark typically requires ice cores from the arctic/antarctic. 

Shit's pretty cool, actually.


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## Zarael (Mar 12, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> _Preface: Christianity is not the only religion this logic applies to. It's just the most popular... especially here._
> 
> So let's say you believe the creation story is metaphorical. You think your god spent billions of years to create human kind in literally one of the most roundabout ways possible. Why?
> Why would he do it that way when he could just snap his fingers and make it so?


Why not? This argument relies on the premise that you have the perspective and understanding that omnipotent being has. Do you? The argument that "If I was God I would do things this way" relies entirely on the premise that you have an understanding of the whole of creation, from every star, atom, planet, animal and everything else equal to that of the creator. Of all the atheist arguments I find this one of the least compelling.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 12, 2021)

Zarael said:


> Why not? This argument relies on the premise that you have the perspective and understanding that omnipotent being has. Do you? The argument that "If I was God I would do things this way" relies entirely on the premise that you have an understanding of the whole of creation, from every star, atom, planet, animal and everything else equal to that of the creator. Of all the atheist arguments I find this one of the least compelling.


God working in mysterious ways is nothing more than a cope. 
"God does something that is demonstrably irrational? It's just mysterious ways that you cannot comprehend!" His "plan" is so great that it requires his adversary to hold dominion over the Earth before it comes into fruition. Top-tier plan he's got there! Literally "if you kill your enemies, they win" tier shit.


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## Zarael (Mar 12, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> God working in mysterious ways is nothing more than a cope.


"Omnipotent being does not necessarily act in ways that a being with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the understanding of creation it has thinks it should act" is the furthest thing from a cope as you can get. It's an entirely rational position. It is irrational to believe that you are in a position to accurately judge how a being that is infinitely further from you than you are from a termite would choose to act in any given circumstance.



> God does something that is demonstrably irrational?


For God to do something demonstrably irrational would require us to have the same information available to make the determination as God does. And we don't. If you mean to say that God seems to do irrational things sure, I grant that, but it doesn't give any more insight than the fact your dog thinks you're "irrational" for having a fridge full of food you don't immediately devour. Acts that seem irrational to lower beings can be justified with a higher level of understanding. Your dog will never understand why you leave the house to earn money, but you do. You will never understand the motive behind Gods actions, but that's ok! No-one asked you to. The only question is whether you reach toward the transcendent understanding your own limitations or reject the transcendent because it doesn't conform to your limitations.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 12, 2021)

Zarael said:


> "Omnipotent being does not necessarily act in ways that a being with a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the understanding of creation it has thinks it should act" is the furthest thing from a cope as you can get. It's an entirely rational position. It is irrational to believe that you are in a position to accurately judge how a being that is infinitely further from you than you are from a termite would choose to act in any given circumstance.


If it has a brain, it understands "get shit done in the most efficient way possible." Even from the termite to the human, this principle applies. Better brains are just better at it. A termite doesn't understand our actions only because it doesn't understand our motivations. But God supposedly told us his motivations through the bible. If my dumb ass (and millions of dumbass creationists) could come up with a quicker and easier way to achieve his goals, then maybe such an omnipotent being simply doesn't exist.


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## Zarael (Mar 12, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> If it has a brain, it understands "get shit done in the most efficient way possible."


And? What's the goal? What does "getting shit done mean" in a universe created by God? You need the answer before you can judge whether things are actually advancing toward that goal.



> But God supposedly told us his motivations through the bible


Have you read the Bible? There are two whole books, Job and Ecclesiastes, entirely devoted to the unknowability of Gods motives and how to deal with that fact.


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## Penis Drager (Mar 12, 2021)

Zarael said:


> And? What's the goal? What does "getting shit done mean" in a universe created by God? You need the answer before you can judge whether things are actually advancing toward that goal.
> 
> 
> Have you read the Bible? There are two whole books, Job and Ecclesiastes, entirely devoted to the unknowability of Gods motives and how to deal with that fact.


God produced us in his own image. We are in the likeness of God. He wanted them to live in paradise, but they ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Them, not being perfect beings such as himself, would die for it. 
The metaphorical interpretation is that this  was God's goal all along; that humans progressively evolved to understand morality and this was the loss of innocence. But why plan it in such a way over billions of years?
He's God. He could create it all such that the story is literally true. Why would he even tell a false story if that would only drive people away from his arms when they learn the reality of the situation? It's his fucking book. He could have had the authors write it accurately. And it makes sense that he would.
Christianity + "old universe cosmogony" makes no fucking sense. (Maybe Gnosticism works here but that shit's weird).


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## Trianon (Mar 19, 2021)

Frens might benefit in thinking about time as the unfolding of a linear story. The Bible as a text mirrors the scope of that story, and the creation + isolation + incarnation + crucifixion + resurrection + restoration storyline is not meant to be downloaded all at once as a Wiki summary. It must be experienced and _anticipated_. The history of Christianity is God saying, "I will do something amazing. Wait for it." and then his followers telling themselves this story and, in the process, learning the meaning of hope and of life. Even today Christians view the world as "already, but not yet" - because they are saved and yet waiting for the next chapter. 

I think that is why the impatience of "couldn't it be done more efficiently?" or "why do it this way?" can actually be the first right question people can ask. Because the next question is, "Why do I feel like it has to be 'efficient'? What does that mean for how I see the world? Am I really seeing it as it is, or do I just want to skip over it to get to the next thing?" 

But to answer the original question, I think some Christians spend too long trying to square things with Current Scientific Theory, when those theories are a long way off from explaining anything about how life came to be. I think it would be more honest for more of our science literature to allow itself to "cope" with the fact that abiogenesis is also a "mysterious ways" argument. It is something we all struggle to truly comprehend, no matter which angle we're coming at it from.


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## Quiet Guy (Mar 20, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Take radiometric dating for instance: if there really was the massive discrepancies which creationists claim exist, why does the science work so well? How were we able to build MRI machines and nuclear bombs if our understanding of radioactive decay was allegedly so flawed? Moreover, why does the data provided by radiometric dating accurately correspond to the timescales suggested by cosmic inflation and the expansion of the universe, and why does it accurately fit with the physical evidence we have: such as the location of fossils within the stratigraphic column, and the comprehensive phylogenetic databases we've compiled which accurately fit with the fossil record? Think about it honestly, and the whole objection falls apart.


My point wasn't that our understanding of the process of radioactive decay is flawed, such that radioactive decay rates themselves are flawed or that issues would arise with the devices you mentioned, but that there may be an erroneous starting point for the isotopes. I'm not sure how serious the alleged isotope discrepancy might be since I haven't been able to look a the paper.

Also, what are you talking about when you're referring to a correlation between cosmic inflation and radiometric dating? They don't use cosmic isotopes to try to determine the ages of objects in space do they?


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## jje100010001 (Mar 20, 2021)

Personally I think that that Noah movie with Russell Crowe had it good in terms of a realistic creation story:


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## Fanatical Pragmatist (Mar 20, 2021)

Because the notion that "Old Earth + Evolution = Christians pwned!" is a false goal.

So what if it took life on Earth 295 billion years to reach its current point? I still accept Jesus Christ as my lord & savior who died for my sins. 
Eat a dick, fedoras.


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## murdered meat bag (Mar 20, 2021)

Fanatical Pragmatist said:


> Because the notion that "Old Earth + Evolution = Christians pwned!" is a false goal.
> 
> So what if it took life on Earth 295 billion years to reach its current point? I still accept Jesus Christ as my lord & savior who died for my sins.
> Eat a dick, fedoras.


"actually, real christians think the bible is literal in every aspect, thats what my baptist dad believes and i hate him"


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Mar 20, 2021)

Quiet Guy said:


> My point wasn't that our understanding of the process of radioactive decay is flawed, such that radioactive decay rates themselves are flawed or that issues would arise with the devices you mentioned, but that there may be an erroneous starting point for the isotopes. I'm not sure how serious the alleged isotope discrepancy might be since I haven't been able to look a the paper.


I'm not exactly sure which paper you're referring to, but since the only source you linked to was Answers in Genesis, I'm going to suggest that you probably have trouble distinguishing a good source from a bad one. I'm also unsure what you mean when you suggest that the isotopes may have had an "erroneous starting point". We have formulas to work out the decay rates of various isotopes, and we have separate formulas to calculate the relative atomic mass (in other words: the percent abundance of each isotope) for every element. The formulas work, so I don't see what should be erroneous about the results.


Quiet Guy said:


> Also, what are you talking about when you're referring to a correlation between cosmic inflation and radiometric dating? They don't use cosmic isotopes to try to determine the ages of objects in space do they?


I was referring to the fact that the dates suggested by radiometric dating here on Earth are consistent with the dates suggested by the expansion of the universe. We can estimate the age of the universe (and by extension, our own galaxy) by looking at the rate of cosmic expansion, and working backwards from there until we reach a point where the universe can no longer get any smaller (the big bang). The figures we get from these observations are on the order of billions of years, which is consistent with the timescales suggested by the geological findings here on Earth.

The question I like to ask every young-Earth creationist around about now is this: knowing that the consensus within cosmology, geology, physical chemistry, paleontology, biology, and genetics are all pointing in the same direction, why do you suppose that all of the experts within these fields are so scandalously wrong, and why do they all seem to be wrong in precisely the same way? I know this question may seem like something of a cheap shot, but I think you'd have to be very incredulous not to at least contemplate it.


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## Quiet Guy (Mar 20, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> I'm not exactly sure which paper you're referring to, but since the only source you linked to was Answers in Genesis, I'm going to suggest that you probably have trouble distinguishing a good source from a bad one. I'm also unsure what you mean when you suggest that the isotopes may have had an "erroneous starting point". We have formulas to work out the decay rates of various isotopes, and we have separate formulas to calculate the relative atomic mass (in other words: the percent abundance of each isotope) for every element. The formulas work, so I don't see what should be erroneous about the results.
> 
> I was referring to the fact that the dates suggested by radiometric dating here on Earth are consistent with the dates suggested by the expansion of the universe. We can estimate the age of the universe (and by extension, our own galaxy) by looking at the rate of cosmic expansion, and working backwards from there until we reach a point where the universe can no longer get any smaller (the big bang). The figures we get from these observations are on the order of billions of years, which is consistent with the timescales suggested by the geological findings here on Earth.
> 
> The question I like to ask every young-Earth creationist around about now is this: knowing that the consensus within cosmology, geology, physical chemistry, paleontology, biology, and genetics are all pointing in the same direction, why do you suppose that all of the experts within these fields are so scandalously wrong, and why do they all seem to be wrong in precisely the same way? I know this question may seem like something of a cheap shot, but I think you'd have to be very incredulous not to at least contemplate it.


The paper I'm referring to was by Dr. Libby. The website claims that he dismissed an unusual ratio of carbon isotopes, which could be an indication of the isotopes being out of equilibrium, as error, but I haven't managed to read his paper to verify this or check how out of equilibrium they might be. That's what I mean by erroneous starting point; the age of fossils could be overestimated if the creatures died in an era when there was much less carbon-14 than expected.

In terms of cosmic expansion, I did note that relativity could have an effect. Also, as far as relative agreement between ages of the Earth and the universe, how close are they supposed to be? Would relativity affect the assessment of cosmic expansion, or for that matter, the background microwave radiation, and how closely do those agree? Come to think of it, how do they know when expansion would have begun if they aren't certain of the size of the universe? Is it based off of the acceleration of the expansion?


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Mar 21, 2021)

Quiet Guy said:


> The paper I'm referring to was by Dr. Libby. The website claims that he dismissed an unusual ratio of carbon isotopes, which could be an indication of the isotopes being out of equilibrium, as error, but I haven't managed to read his paper to verify this or check how out of equilibrium they might be. That's what I mean by erroneous starting point; the age of fossils could be overestimated if the creatures died in an era when there was much less carbon-14 than expected.


Carbon-14 is only good for dating things that are less than 50,000 years old, due to it's relatively short half-life. Scientists are also well aware of the degree to which carbon concentration in the atmosphere can vary depending upon the geological period, as well as the processes which govern it (the carbon cycle, volcanic activity, carbon weathering, etc), and how to determine the concentration (radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology).

Even if everything we knew about radiocarbon dating was wrong (it isn't), it would do absolutely nothing to transform our current understanding of the age of the Earth. We have other methods (such as uranium-lead dating) which are far more accurate for that.


Quiet Guy said:


> In terms of cosmic expansion, I did note that relativity could have an effect. Also, as far as relative agreement between ages of the Earth and the universe, how close are they supposed to be? Would relativity affect the assessment of cosmic expansion, or for that matter, the background microwave radiation, and how closely do those agree? Come to think of it, how do they know when expansion would have begun if they aren't certain of the size of the universe? Is it based off of the acceleration of the expansion?


Relativity states that the faster you travel, time slows down, but the kind of speeds an object would need to be travelling in order to experience a significant difference in time dilation are so large that it's not especially relevant to calculations concerning the age of the universe (an object would need to be travelling roughly 87% the speed of light just to slow time down by 50%, for example). It's also known that cosmic expansion is accelerating, which would suggest that time would have moved faster, not slower, during the early universe than it does now.

How we calculate cosmic expansion is by looking at the observable universe and calculating how fast galaxies are moving away from one another (typically by monitoring how redshifted they are). The absolute size of the universe is not especially relevant, since cosmic expansion works in all directions everywhere, and is a property of space itself. What's relevant is knowing how densely concentrated all of the matter and energy in the observable universe would have been at arbitrary intervals into the past, and it's here how we work out when the big bang happened.


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## Daughter of Cernunnos (Mar 21, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> If the goal was humans, you're smoking crack if you think an all powerful God would take so long to do it.


The good thing is, not all religions include the premise that there are omnipotent Gods. Only monotheistic religions have that concept. The Gods allow Gaia to mold us how She will. They have no reason not to.


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## Gig Bucking Fun (Mar 21, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> I'm not saying creationism makes a lot of sense. I'm just saying that a god that gives two shits about people would probably not take his sweet ass time to make them.
> 
> The bottom line is if humans are the goal, why nog get to the fucking point? If essentially 0 effort is required to make them from scratch, why make it look like everything came about naturally?


You can go to the grocery store and buy a pack of lemons, yet some people opt to plant their own seeds. It's not purely logical to do so: you have to buy a pack of seeds to plant, fertilizer to grow said plant, and wait weeks for it to grow. This is all in service to recreate a process that could've been easily circumvented by a trip to the store, but are you standing outside of your local Home Depot trying to debunk everyone who walks out with a pack of tomato seeds?


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## Quiet Guy (Mar 21, 2021)

Hellbound Hellhound said:


> Carbon-14 is only good for dating things that are less than 50,000 years old, due to it's relatively short half-life. Scientists are also well aware of the degree to which carbon concentration in the atmosphere can vary depending upon the geological period, as well as the processes which govern it (the carbon cycle, volcanic activity, carbon weathering, etc), and how to determine the concentration (radiocarbon dating and dendrochronology).
> 
> Even if everything we knew about radiocarbon dating was wrong (it isn't), it would do absolutely nothing to transform our current understanding of the age of the Earth. We have other methods (such as uranium-lead dating) which are far more accurate for that.
> 
> ...


As a note, gravity also plays a role in time dilation, so I'd imagine that there is the possibility of a fair amount of dilation in the early universe, but again, I can't do the calculations. As far as velocity, the expansion itself shouldn't be velocity, since it's the expansion of space, but out of curiosity, how fast might the non-light particles be moving? Actually, would the expansion of space itself also affect dilation in some manner? Also, I think I read in one of Dr. David Greene's books that distance coupled with motion could also affect the perception of time. From what I understand, if someone is observing light from a far away source while moving, the light will appear to be from a further back time than if observed when standing still, although I might be wrong about that or misunderstand what he meant.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Mar 21, 2021)

Quiet Guy said:


> As a note, gravity also plays a role in time dilation, so I'd imagine that there is the possibility of a fair amount of dilation in the early universe, but again, I can't do the calculations. As far as velocity, the expansion itself shouldn't be velocity, since it's the expansion of space, but out of curiosity, how fast might the non-light particles be moving? Actually, would the expansion of space itself also affect dilation in some manner? Also, I think I read in one of Dr. David Greene's books that distance coupled with motion could also affect the perception of time. From what I understand, if someone is observing light from a far away source while moving, the light will appear to be from a further back time than if observed when standing still, although I might be wrong about that or misunderstand what he meant.


I'm not sure what effect cosmic expansion might have on how time is experienced locally, but certainly in terms of the effect it has on the relative velocity of distant objects, it would increase directional time dilation between those two objects. In terms of gravitational time dilation, you run into a similar problem to the one I pointed out earlier, which is that the gravitational potential you'd need to significantly slow time down is so tremendously large. In other words, if the universe is any less dense than a black hole, you're simply not going to get the kind of time dilation needed in order to support the timescales proposed by young-Earth creationists. Even neutron stars are only thought to increase time dilation by around 20%.


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## wtfNeedSignUp (Mar 21, 2021)

So many bullshit about the topic yet no one ever mentions that the first tale of creation in the bible is immediately followed by a second contradictory tale of creation.
About the OP, it's a faggot atheist approach that fails the moment anyone argues that god created the "system" of the world that results in the large sequence of events leading to humanity. And in general, Atheism fails because it doesn't really give any alternative explanation for what created the universe so it just tries to tear everything else down, plus it never follows up to the logical ramifications of a godless world.


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## Pokemonquistador2 (Mar 22, 2021)

Penis Drager said:


> The point of this thread isn't about how dumb creationism is (it's pretty dumb but whatever). It's that any anthrocentric theology is dumb without a form of creationism.
> Deism can still work here, but Christianity can't. If the goal is to make people, a perfectly wise god would choose the most efficient route. "Mysterious ways" is a dumbfuck argument since it only takes the most basic understanding to understand how dumb it would be to take a billion extra steps to do what he could effortlessly do in a millisecond all in one go.


What makes you think it wasn't a millisecond to him?  And what makes you think humans are His only project? God could have billions of other worlds cooking in this universe, most of which were formed long before our Earth came about. God could be an enormous fractal being who has a different form of the Godhead operating on each planet, tailored to its specific existence, and all essentially are united and function as one Being on a higher Heavenly plane. Trying to guess what God is and what He's up to is like an ant trying to figure out what a human is like.   If that bothers you, that such a being could be aware of your existence on the Personal level and yet be so wide and encompassing as to fill all of history and space beyond the little part of it that we can perceive in our telescopes, then you're just going to have to be bothered. There is no way to answer your questions to your satisfaction.


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## Blake Chortles (Mar 22, 2021)

I’m not sure you can be a Christian without believing in creation the more I think about it.

The entire arc of Christianity is reconciling yourself with your creator. Its not just part of it but the entire purpose Christianity exists. If you believe in God, and the fact he sent his son to redeem you and all that, why is the idea that he created you such a hard sell? Its the core part of the faith.

As for the 6 days thing, again why not. As a christian you believe in so many supernatural things, heaven, hell, jesus, etc. On top of that the last century has been amazing for discovery of how God might have used physics for his work. Theory of relativity, 6 days according to whose clock?

Other things like the changes in the speed of light, dilation of the universe etc etc. Carbon dating and fossils records (and as for prehuman ones several have been demonstrably faked) make a lot of assumptions that are adjusted as time goes on. The discovery that there are extra dimensions, that we live in a bounded subset of the universe.

Im not saying these all prove one thing or another the point is our understanding is constantly changing.

I’m not saying we know all the answers but there isn’t as big of a divide as you would imagine and its weird so many Christians get caught up in this but accept so many other things.


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## Hellbound Hellhound (Mar 22, 2021)

Blake Chortles said:


> As for the 6 days thing, again why not. As a christian you believe in so many supernatural things, heaven, hell, jesus, etc. On top of that the last century has been amazing for discovery of how God might have used physics for his work. Theory of relativity, 6 days according to whose clock?
> 
> Other things like the changes in the speed of light, dilation of the universe etc etc. Carbon dating and fossils records (and as for prehuman ones several have been demonstrably faked) make a lot of assumptions that are adjusted as time goes on. The discovery that there are extra dimensions, that we live in a bounded subset of the universe.


The crucial point here is that the assumptions scientists make aren't adjusted arbitrarily; they're merely refined as our understanding grows and our scientific instruments become better. We now know what the speed of light is to a high degree of accuracy, just as we know how radioactive decay works to a high degree of accuracy, and based upon what we know about the laws of physics, we have absolutely no reason to believe that these things were ever markedly different, much less any actual evidence to support such a notion.

As for fossils: suggesting that the fossil record is some kind of forgery is a crackpot-tier objection, even if you insist on throwing in century-old red herrings like Piltdown man. The fact remains that fossils are only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to evolution, and with each new discipline and discovery, all of the pieces still come together to create the same picture. Why is that?


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