When did Christians drop creationism?

[Turquoise]

Back in the New Atheism days, many of the debates centred around Creationism vs Evolution and the comments sections were full of "Dawkins has sex with monkeys", "Where is the missing link?", "Where are the fronkeys?" "They can't explain the human eye" etc. Nowadays though, it seems almost everyone looks at human diversity through an evolutionary lense. I almost never see Darwinian evolution contested these days.

Was it a generational thing? Did they just cut their losses?

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

Well which theory of creationism? There’s YEC and OEC.

Young earth creationism or “YEC” is where the events of the first chapter of genesis happen in 7 days, with the garden of Eden following almost immediately after.

Old earth creationism is basically the same as the Big Bang theory. However, the Ylem, or the “egg” of the world, was so carefully and meticulously formed that every single event afterward was planned by an omniscient architect, aka God.

I think most people have their own interpretations. Some will apply as much natural reasoning as possible to supernatural events. While some will attribute the supernatural to everything. With most of the rest being in between.

There is unity in Christianity, but there isn’t uniformity; we may differ on details. But the how of it all remains the same: this all came about by God’s actions.

"Dawkins has sex with monkeys",

I choose to believe this

 

[JohnnyG]

Pretty sure all of us who believe in a supreme God still believe he's the Creator of the universe. Do you mean "young earth creationists" specifically? Because that is/was just one subset of creationism.

If you're genuinely curious about such things, a good (non-religious) book called The First Three Minutes steps through the early stages of the universe's formation. Probably 15-20 years since I read it, but I still remember that as it moved toward the Big Bang, it kept saying "well this part is impossible under current physics, so we'll just relax this fundamental rule and assume it sprung into being later".

Making peace with the futility of explaining the universe through definitive Facts & Logic is a big step toward considering that maybe it took an all powerful God to kick things off. And you'll be in good company with guys like Planck, Heisenberg, Maxwell, Pascal, Godel...

 

[IAmNotAlpharius]

Most Christians I knew growing up weren’t creationists or flat earthers.

 

[Bioniclelover]

Creationism and Biblical literalism is a very recent, mostly Protestant and largely American affair. Theory of Big Bang was created by a catholic priest and was for a time dismissed by some scholars because it allowed for an argument that the God was the prime mover who caused it.

If you are interested to actually learn more about this, historyforatheists.com blog wrote quite a few articles debunking popular atheist claims https://historyforatheists.com/2021/03/the-great-myths-11-biblical-literalism/ (the author is an atheist himself so he's not a biased christian apologetic)

 

[Punished Derich]

The Catholic Church officially took the stance that evolution is more than a theory in 1996, so then, officially. That being said, you seem to be describing young Earth creationism, which is nearly exclusively held by American Evangelicals, and most believe in old Earth creationism/intelligent design and things like that.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Probably the same time as they dropped the battle against gay marriage.

I'm very serious about that. YEC was part of a political movement as much as anything, and it lost power along with the rest of the religious right. I do know some boomers who are very sincere believers in YEC, but they've pretty much given up that part of the culture war as lost. But the New Atheism is mostly dead too. Nobody these days asks whether religion is irrational, they ask whether it's ist-a-phobic.

 

[Ravier Xavenblood]

Most Christians I knew growing up weren’t creationists or flat earthers.

I knew a handful. One of them was my biology teacher in high school. There were plenty of people in my own town who took the Bible 100% literally and they never shut up about it.

 

[raspberry mocha]

It's easier to be racist with evolution.

 

[Generic Anime Girl]

It depends on the denomination. Evangelicals seem to be Young Earth Creationists, while Catholics themselves literally created the big bang theory as an accepted scientific hypothesis. The Jehovah's witnesses probably believe in something extremely schizophrenic.

 

[Squawking Macaw]

I've noticed a certain shift as well. About a decade or so ago, Youtube comments sections used to be littered with arguments on whether evolution was real or whether humans were animals. I remember seeing things like "humans aren't animals, they're mammals" embarrassingly often.

It depends on the denomination. Evangelicals seem to be Young Earth Creationists, while Catholics themselves literally created the big bang theory as an accepted scientific hypothesis. The Jehovah's witnesses probably believe in something extremely schizophrenic.

Funnily enough the only man I know who doesn't believe in evolution is Catholic. Or it could be that he doesn't believe humans descended from or are apes, even Christians who believe in evolution don't tend to like that part.

 

[Lovely Kin]

Young Earth Creationism was confined to the few evangelicals I knew when I was growing up. The school I went to I was taught about evolution. Evangelicals were pretty much rare where I'm from, everyone I knew was either Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Mainline Protestant or nonreligious. Not counting the occasional jeet, A Buddhist family from Vietnam, or the extremely rare Muslim.

 

[User names must be unique]

I think they are/were a smaller crowd than people imagined, they just had a magnifying glass placed on them by a left wing media and reddit atheists.

 

[Yamaha YM2612]

We didn't. When nazis came over in operation paperclip, they just put their satanic beliefs in the mainstream and called that "christianity"

 

[A Very Big Fish]

As a Catholic, I always took Genesis as more or less symbolic, which isn't particularly unique or new.
For example, St. Augustine (born in the 4th Century) thought Genesis was symbolic, because he believed God created things instantly. The days of creation had a specific symbolism that I can't remember at the moment.

If I were to analogize my beliefs, I think its like when you first see a computer game as a kid. You don't know how it works, but you know someone else made it, and experience it's wonder. A greater understanding of the universe, evolution, and the natural sciences, is when you learn what coding is, and come to a deeper appreciation of the craft and artistry that it is composed of.

Just my two cents.

 

[JohnnyG]

while Catholics themselves literally created the big bang theory

Nice try bigot, but Trusted & Verified Sources(TM) in wikipedo clearly prove that The Big Bang Theory was created by Chaim "Chuck Lorre" Levine and Bill Prady.

 

[Derrick]

No literal Garden of Eden would create very serious theological problems that would undermine all of Christianity. No Adam and Eve means no fall of man, it also means Cain and Abel (their direct children), and no Noah's ark (great 10x grandson). You can see already how large parts of Genesis become unraveled by this, but we can go further. The Gospel of Luke traces Jesus' lineage directly back to Adam, generation-by-generation, which raises serious questions about who (if anyone) in his family tree is real and who is not, Jesus himself refers to Cain and Abel as real people (Luke 11:51) which indicates he seemed to believe in Creationism (or at a minimum a literal Adam and Eve).

The truth is either the Earth is a lot younger than mainstream science believes or Christianity has a serious problem, and I say this as a Creationist.

 

[Suburban Bastard]

Creationist circles never really left entirely, focus just shifted away as they lost issues like teaching it in school and gay marriage. Once the right returned, it was in the form of populism; the Christian nuts no longer had a wheel at the driving seat. Probably also the realization that trying to defend teaching creationism just looks cringey in every possible way.

 

[Generic Anime Girl]

No literal Garden of Eden would create very serious theological problems that would undermine all of Christianity. No Adam and Eve means no fall of man, it also means Cain and Abel (their direct children), and no Noah's ark (great 10x grandson). You can see already how large parts of Genesis become unraveled by this, but we can go further. The Gospel of Luke traces Jesus' lineage directly back to Adam, generation-by-generation, which raises serious questions about who (if anyone) in his family tree is real and who is not, Jesus himself refers to Cain and Abel as real people (Luke 11:51) which indicates he seemed to believe in Creationism (or at a minimum a literal Adam and Eve).

The truth is either the Earth is a lot younger than mainstream science believes or Christianity has a serious problem, and I say this as a Creationist.

the garden of eden is in jackson county missouri actually

 

[TruffleSpark]

I think it's really that while fundies might still be around, they are not the core of the conservative coalition like they were in the 2000s. So other conservatives no longer have to entertain their bullshit in order to maintain their own positions on the right.