Maybe Christians should not focus on creation

gmt · September 21, 2018, 2:39am

Usually, human activities involve both objective part and subjective part.

(Objective part: the functions without consciousness like heart beating. Subjective part: your judgment, decision, solution, attitude, etc.
They may not be the right terms. But I haven’t found better alternative terms.)

Let’s suppose scientists are super smart. They could explain something as big as the universe and as small as particles. They could even make robots/programs that no human beings could win in a chess game.

Now a scientist walks down the street and sees someone injured and needing help. What should be his proper response?

If he just walks away, I don’t think you would have good words for him.

But if he helps, how could he know the injured person is not Ted Bundy?

If he pretends to be smart, it would only make him dumber.

Now it’s Christians’ turn to be smart.

When people are free to decide what to do, you can hardly find natural law to detect or determine what they are planning, their intention, etc. And in some cases, when you find out, it’s too late, or you don’t even have the opportunity to find out.

When I find it hard to believe that God created everything, I am strongly pro Christianity, because we can’t detect human intentions or their plans, and I need the effect of Christian faith.

God is what we need to deal with human subjective part. And Christianity is quite successful. Maybe Christians should focus on this, not to argue about when God created everything. (It’s certainly better if you can explain everything in the world without contradictions or failures.)

I hope this may not offend someone and I am sorry if it does.

Christy · September 21, 2018, 2:54am

It just seems like you are envisioning two non-intersecting sets; scientists and Christians, when in reality Christians are a subset of scientists. How can a Christian who is a scientist avoid focusing on creation if that is his or her vocation and profession?

gmt · September 21, 2018, 3:05am

Yes, two non-intersecting sets now. Maybe one day they could be one. But we won’t wait until then to enjoy both the success of science and faith. The important thing is we need to be careful because it’s also a proven fact that we can’t apply science or faith beyond their realm without failures.

Christy · September 21, 2018, 3:09am

I don’t understand. What do you do with the fact that millions of Christians are also scientists? They are not non-intersecting sets. I personally know many people who are members of the set “scientist” and also members of the set “Christian.”

gmt · September 21, 2018, 3:14am

No, I didn’t say a scientist couldn’t be a Christian or a Christian couldn’t be a scientist.
My point is about the scientific practice or religious practice and what result we could expect.

Dominic_Roy_Accampo · June 21, 2019, 12:54pm

The simple truth of the matter is this: The Bible begins with this verse, “In the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth…” If you reject this, then why believe anything else, why believe that God is right about anything and mankind wrong. Either God can be trusted or God cannot be trusted. Note; degeneration and adaptability have been proven, but evolution has never bee observed, but is only a conjecture begun by the denial of God.

Bill_II · June 21, 2019, 1:53pm

Not sure there are many Christians that would reject this even if they do accept evolution.

Again, not many Christians would not trust God.

Evolution has been observed and I don’t think denial of God had any part in the origin of the theory. If you believe that you are following the teachings of Ellen White. Do metorologists deny God when they forecast the weather?

Laura · June 21, 2019, 2:08pm

Well, I’d tend to agree with you. I can’t say I’ve ever met a Christian who didn’t believe that God created everything.

Wookin_Panub · June 21, 2019, 5:16pm

It doesn’t offend me, but you have brought a lot of presuppositions to the table. The biblical worldview which I hold to has no contradictions nor failures. Furthermore when my camp argues creation, what the overall argument is sufficiency and the authority of scripture. It’s not just creation we are focusing on, it is everything. Because if we cannot trust Genesis, then we can’t trust any part of the Bible.

mitchellmckain · June 22, 2019, 2:24am

Maybe Christians should not focus on creation

Creation has never been the focus of Christianity.

Indeed, quite right. There is a difference between creation not being the focus of Christianity and sweeping it under rug.

The real problem here is the type of question being addressed: how rather than why? The Bible is not a creation for dummies manual. It was never the purpose of the Genesis to explain how God created the universe and science just makes it clear how much this is the case since it show just how much bigger and more complex the process was than we could ever have imagined before – and that is a GOOD thing because it means God is greater than we imagined before. So, frankly, the real issue here isn’t the greatness of God but the greatness of preachers and theologians who don’t like scientists “stealing their thunder,” undermining their imagined glory and authority – something they never really had in the first place!

How the universe was created is a question that science can sink its teeth into, but not why. To be sure the nature of a thing created tells us a lot about why it was likely created, but that is still a matter of theology not science – a matter of logic founded on the premise that it was created by God and not an hypothesis that can be tested by what can be measured.

This is not about rejecting God or believing in God but about rejecting the pontification of self-important people making their living from religion. If you want to talk about believing what God is telling us then I suggest that the evidence God sends us from the sky and earth is a far more likely substance of this than the declarations of those who are using religion for their own benefit.

God can be trusted. And science has proven how trustworthy it is. But clearly preachers, Pharisees, and people spouting nothing but rhetoric without any objective evidence cannot be trusted at all.

Incorrect. Evolution has been observed over and over and over again, in a thousand different ways – unlike magical creation which has never been observed in any way at all… EVER!

The process of evolution shown in the fossil evidence? Observed and verified many times.
The evolution of organisms in controlled experiments? Observed in numerous species.
The evolutionary algorithm creating things better than anything human engineers could design? Yep.
The evolution of the universe shown in the light coming to us from the sky? All you have to do is look.

gmt · June 22, 2019, 3:56am

The difference here is more about the way we think.

The way I think:

What is life?
Do we live because we are living things and we have our own life to live, or because someone created us and we live for His purpose?
And, why do we need God? Because God serves us (by helping us live better), or we serve God (by pleasing God)?

My answer is we live our own life and we need God to help us live better, not the other way around.

And Christianity offers us some great ideas (to help us live better,) for example,

Love (I’d add two words after that, “each other”)
Grace
The right life (What’s a right life?)
The right way to live the right life (What’s the right way?)
A role model (What’s the best role model to help everyone?)
Following the role model to live better
And marketing them.

Christianity could even be greater if it’s open to criticism and revision.

And I understand the way you think and your premises.

Do you mean the theory of evolution is motivated reasoning, not objective?

Whatever their motivations are, evolutionists accept criticism as long as based on facts. That alone makes their views objective enough.

Yes, observation. But have more people observed creation than evolution?

gmt · June 22, 2019, 4:20am

My approach is rather different. If part of Christianity could be proven true and help us live better, we not only trust that part but also hold to.

Dominic_Roy_Accampo · June 23, 2019, 6:27pm

No, evolution has never been observed. It is pure conjecture, as noted by one atheist, who is also an evolutionist, who states Evolution%20Richard%20Dawkins%20Faith%20quote
Evolution is 100% conjecture on what must have happened in the past!
“Evolution has been observed, It’s just that it hasn’t been observed while it’s happening.” = LOL!

Bill_II · June 23, 2019, 6:36pm

Yes it has. It has been observed in plants.

The rest of the quote that was left out of your meme is:

“it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene… the detective hasn’t actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue… Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English.”

But nice try on the quote mine.

mitchellmckain · June 23, 2019, 9:05pm

Some might say that nothing has been directly observed. What enters our eyes is not the thing itself but reflected and emitted photons. So all observation is a matter of taking the evidence which is sent to us and reconstructing what it came from. But of course not everyone can see. …or hear, or touch, or use various other abilities which allow us to observe the world. People have all sorts of handicaps. So even though some of us can take the photons coming out of the sky and reconstruct the development of the universe over the last 13.8 billion years to an increasing precision, other people lack this ability. And while some can take what comes to us from the ground and reconstruct the development of the earth and life upon it, others don’t have the capacity. And last of all geneticists have the ability to reconstruct the development of life on the earth from this data in the DNA/RNA, but others cannot do it. All of these examples, it would seem are the one eyed men in the land of the blind.

But what then shall we tell the blind man who calls those with sight liars and declares that there is no such thing as sight? In the case of a literal blind man, this doesn’t sound like a probable scenario, does it? That kind of arrogance and willful ignorance only tends to work when they have a crowd to hide behind.

Dominic_Roy_Accampo · June 24, 2019, 1:56am

You said, “This kind of thing only works when they have a crowd to hide behind,” while your image of self is a skull? namely something that has nothing to do with who you really are.

The blind today are those who list their conjectures as facts, claiming that things which have never been observed have been observed.

The miracles of God have been observed and in the Case of Jesus have four original accounts of his life, death and resurrection. These are backed up by numerous letters, both in the Bible and outside of the Bible that confirm many of the events and people mentioned.

As for some claiming that, “…nothing has been directly observed.” this is a complicated attempt to discount everything so that you can claim anything. Including the absurdity that your fanciful conjectures on origins are more than the imaginative rantings of those who cannot see God and or cannot understand the truly unlimited nature of God.

MarkD · June 24, 2019, 7:02am

But really, when it comes to the beginning of everything what does anyone have that is more than conjecture? Has theology been elevated to one of the hard sciences now?

mitchellmckain · June 24, 2019, 7:19am

Scientists have the evidence of the scientific data. What this means is that they do experiments to see if the results agree with their hypotheses. And when this agreement happens over and over again, it tends to provide the means to calculate quantities like the age of the universe with increasing accuracy. This approach has a high degree of honesty because it doesn’t just look for proof for their idea like a lawyer does. And it is objective because it provides written procedure anyone can follow to get the same results no matter what they believe. The results are conclusions which are considerably more than just conjecture.

…you did say “anyone”…

But of course this doesn’t mean that science has all the answers to all the possible questions. It doesn’t. And in those case what you say certainly does apply. Christians like myself may choose to take what the Bible says seriously but that is a fundamentally subjective sort of evidence and we cannot expect other people to accept it.

Dominic_Roy_Accampo · June 24, 2019, 12:53pm

What we find in the fossil record is a mass grave, entire herds of animals buried together of all ages, some layers of coal that was formed from this being forty feet deep and covering a hundred square miles or more, meaning the original mass of living things was about four-hundred feet thick and of course covering the same about of land area. This is not an observed process, in fact to say anything about it was observed by science or people today is either insane or an outright lie. The Bible gives us the only account of human and divine observation, a six day creation story and the flood. But the only things that science can do is deny this, deny God and then invent a story whose only real support lies in the imaginations of those who create it.

This is because nothing in the actual fossil record, in fact, nothing within reality can prove that you are correct, so you seek to bolster your lies by using words like, “observed,” to cover over your lack of real proof. In point of fact, every disclaimer regarding God and the claims of God are based entirely upon these propositions:
#1 There is nothing which is beyond proof, therefore God cannot exist.
#2 Nothing can ever have occurred which is beyond the rates that we see today.
A-This is the primary basis of man made climate change, the proposal that if it is happening faster than the conjectured billions of years of past climate changes then this MUST be man made.
#3 The claim that all independent thinkers agree on evolution; need I explain?

Everything that science investigates was filtered through these claims for over fifty years of time. Only today are we beginning to wake up to the reality that God may exist despite our inability to prove God and that changes have been going on at far faster rates and with far less predictability than we ever imagined, because the world is not billions of years of constant slow changes but only six thousand years old, with God making most of this, but not all of this, both slow and constant for our benefit.

As for the idea that a belief in evolution makes any of this more grand or complex, this is just foolishness. The real process cannot be made less or more grand or wonderful, but it can be dumbed down for our minds to handle it, as the real process is beyond anything that our pathetic minds can even imagine.

MarkD · June 24, 2019, 1:58pm

Oh I definitely agree with you and think conjecture based on the observations of science are by far the best kind for answering empirical questions.

I’m not sure why Mr. Accampo chooses to qualify conjecture with “pure”. A quick google of the term “conjecture” yields:

an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information.

It isn’t true that conjectures are based on nothing at all but imagination. But it is very often true that we must come to our best judgement with incomplete knowledge. Where questions of origins are concerned we must always infer the past from the present, and the more distant the past generally the more spotty the evidence. Fortunately the manner in which science operates permits us to build on the findings of others in a way that is more reliable than in more speculative fields. Evolution isn’t anything a well educated person can just toss aside as mere speculation, and the conjectures of science are much more than that.

By comparison, empirical conjectures based on the bald assumption that an ancient text is a kind of answer key for every possible question regarding origins is just nonsense.