I am not.
I never have.
And you see to read what you think I am saying rather than understanding me.
We are getting nowhere here (as usual)
I just can’t seem to make you understand what i am saying.
Richard
You say it right here:
“So what? It proves nothing!.it is still a subjective connection. You cannot prove the ancestry by observation.”
If observations can not be used to confirm a theory, then you reject the scientific method.
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???
How can yo observe something that happened thousands or even millions of years ago?
There is no logic in your response.
You claim to know what happened but cannot observe it happening. Does that mean you are no longer using the scientific method when pontificating or insisting on what happened early on in Evolution?
Richard
By digging down through rock strata, or by observing valves, counting tree rings, or analyzing ice core samples … Or even just staring up into the night sky.
Richard, if you’ve been hanging around this site as long as you have and you still don’t get something even as basic as this, then maybe this isn’t the best use of your time (or that of those who volunteer all these explanations to deaf ears.).
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Very funny…
You knw perfectly well what things I claim you cannot observe, and i know perfectly well that the light from distant star can take millions of years to reach us.
Perhaps you can credit me with a little bit more intelligence and knowledge after all this time
When you can observe a dinosaur changing into a bird over however many generations, then you will have observed what ToE claims. But until or unless you do so you cannot. Have I made myself clear?
Richard
If it wasn’t your faith that was being ridiculed, then you shouldn’t have complained about your faith being ridiculed.
It’s incidents like this that make this:
so ironic. It would be easier to make us understand what you are saying if you would (i) provide examples (which you refuse to do), and (ii) understand what you are saying yourself.
No-one claims that Australopithecines were in the direct lineage of humans.
You really should find out what scientists say before trying to object to it.
I think that, technically, that he has those thoughts is a fact, but the contents of those thoughts are not facts.
If you can’t follow the conversation properly do not criticise it. Taking one sentence out if context proves nothing.
Go on, assume that I know nothing, it is easier for you. The lineage goes backwards as well as forwards. You are still claiing common ancestry. And you still cannot observe that.
Knit-picking is not clever.
And you claim that I am rude! Heal thyself.
Richard
SDA is a religion…i agree. Its unfortunate that the other denominations do not
You completely misunderstood the importance of my point…that atheism believes/claims (whatever you prefer) that morality comes from social experimentation…it is not from a deity according to atheists.
That means that any claim that the Bible contains in its pages allegorical or metaphorical stories about morality, that is complete nonsense scientifically. Mainstream science does not agree that morality came from Genesis 1-11, or any of the Bible for that matter.
Its interesting that TEism seems to think that Darwinian Evolution can draw morality out of the Bible in order to make Genesis chapter 1-11 fit. Thats utter rot, Social Science says it comes from Evolutionary Social experimentation…its a product of Evolution not God!
This is another catestrophic dilemma for TEism and its claims God was trying to teach humanity about morality.
Then stop doing it.
I’m not assuming that you know nothing, I’m concluding that you hardly ever know what you’re talking about, and are too arrogant to consider that you might be the one who is ignorant and/or wrong.
This time is no exception. You have, as a result of your misplaced belief in your own ability, completely missed the point; and as a bonus have revealed that you don’t know the difference between common ancestry and lineal descent. Also, you’re still using words you don’t understand, despite having your error pointed out to you previously.
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You are still making the same mistake, though at least no longer anthropomorhising atheism.
Atheism doesn’t claim anything about the origin of morality other than it doesn’t come from a god.
Atheism is a rejection of religion, and nothing more.
i do not think you appreciate the gravity of the TEist situation. Anyone who has studied even basic psychology (which i have because all teachers must and i was trained at university as a high school teacher) will tell you that any claim by atheists stating “we do not believe…” that is a belief in and of itself. The notion that atheism does not have beliefs is just plain wrong…its a pointless argument for a pot to call a kettle black so im not going to argue that point any further…you can claim all you like…such a position is fundamentally wrong. Id suggest if you cant agree with that, then you need to go and study the topic with academics who can explain the “why” to you.
Again, social sciences outside of religion fundamentally state, morality does not come from the bible or a deity, it comes from evolutionary social experimentation. i have already provided references for this in previous posts (what’s interesting…no one has even tried to refute those references about where atheism and even science believes morality came from…and that is because they cannot refute them outside of religion!!!) Science cannot argue against my claim there because social science is the only way for science to actually test the claim…Science cant test the claim “God”…and that instantly leaves social experimentation as the only testable evidence thus evidentially concurring with my claim!!!
The above dilemma is catastrophic for any TEist who claims that Genesis chapters 1-11 is a story of morality…its catastrophic because the very science that TEism is founded upon denies their own claims about the allegorical nature of Genesis chapters 1-11…indeed the rest of the entire bible story. Its a straw plucking exercise for TEism to try to get around that enormous problem…the only real way around it i think is to pretend it isnt there!
YECism does not have this dilemma simply because:
- we make the foundational claim that we have strong evidence via the internal consistency and historical authenticity of the bible narrative AS WRITTEN…we do not have internal biblical inconsistencies that refute our historical evidences for the authenticity of the narrative when it comes to the topic of morality
- point 1 above demonstrates via a long biblical historical narrative where God has endeavoured to educate his people (indeed even the world) that morality does come from him…for example, he wrote the 10 commandments with his own finger.
- point 2 above demonstrates via the bible narrative over thousands of years we have an historically proven authorship (if you will) that we worship a God who “literally” created this earth 6,000 years ago with the very first human beings Adam and Eve and that all mankind is born from their lineage directly…our saviours own lineage is recorded as traced back to them directly through two family trees found in the New Testament Gospels
- the consistency in points 1,2,&3 above lead YEC to the “evidential” conclusion that it is not possible that the evolutionary claim morality came from hundreds of thousands (even millions) of years of human development and social experimentation…its not consistent with the biblical historical account.
Let me just provide a quick expansion further explaining point 4 above:
-
Genesis = creation of a world without sin, without pain, without suffering, WITHOUT DEATH (fundamentally, there is zero biblical record of death prior to Cain killing Abel)
-
New Testament Gospels = Christ foretelling his physical death on the cross and the Second Coming . The aim is clearly redemption of mankind from the “Wages of Sin is Death” (no possible connection between spiritual death in a Genesis Allegory and the blood Christ physically shed on the cross…he really died physically and was raised physically specifically so that we may live at the Second Coming.
-
Revelation 21 = New heaven and a New Earth…there will be no more sorrow, no more crying, no more suffering, no more pain, NO MORE DEATH!
The logical process in the 3 steps found in the overall biblical theme above, and this is a universal belief btw…its not just my claim all Christianity believes the above, is that the world was created, it has been corrupted, and in the future Christ will restore it back to its former glory. That is not consistent with Darwinian Evolution in any way shape or form…and this is why Theistic Evolutionism is not Biblical. Theistic Darwinian Evolution promotes the idea that mankind is evolving salvation…which is theological nonsense.
I have i think, a very logical argument there and i dont really even need bible texts to illustrate the logical pathway to my conclusion as all of the inherant claims within the 4 YECism points above… everyone here already knows that they are true. We can google every single one of them without even trying to manipulate the answers AI will give.
What is really unfortunate about the title of this thread is that it attempts to make the inference that YEC and ID are sidebars. Whoever wrote this has no idea that when it comes to biblical theology, the sidebar is the distraction that the mockery of TEism provides in contrast to the gospel and salvation. TEism has no capacity to answer the theological dilemmas it faces…and yet it blindly makes claims that YEC and ID drive people away from God. That is a fairytale…the bible tells us very plainly, people lose their faith because of unbelief…science has nothing to do with that. Despite a very obvious fundamental principle there, according to TEism, it appears our science must be right before we can believe !
Social science may make that claim. Atheism does not.
(the rest of your post was about YEC and TE, neither of which is relevant to this point).
Adam, do you understand why others do not support the claims of YEC (those you listed)?
If we think of Genesis 1-11, how much support do we have for the YEC interpretation?
Outside of the biblical scriptures: negative. Not only zero, there are tons of facts that appear to speak against the YEC claims about the age of the universe and life, and against the claim of a global flood. Findings in cosmology, geology, fossil data, genetics, archeology, history - all speak against these YEC claims. If the YEC interpretations would be correct, we should find evidence for the claims, not just against the claims.
How about evidence within the biblical scriptures?
Those who are experts of the scripture, language, ANE cultures - all tell that the YEC interpretations are misinterpretations because the YEC interpretations do not take into account the genre of the texts, or the context. The biblical scriptures have not dropped from Heaven. Genesis is not just written in an ANE surrounding, Genesis is an ANE text - or rather, a compilation of ANE stories. You cannot separate the ANE thinking - context and content - from Genesis without doing violence to the scriptures. Treating the scripture like a modern text does not show faithfulness to the scripture.
The claim of internal consistency supporting the YEC claims demands a specific set of assumptions. The texts are not studied objectively, instead the texts are approached from the assumption that they fit to the YEC interpretation. When someone refers to creation, it is assumed that the reference represents a YEC-style interpretation with all its flavours.
Your claims may seem ok for a person that looks the world through the ‘YEC lenses’ but for the others, the claims are not convincing.
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That word is forbidden, but I suggest you look in a mirror and say it.
I am not the one declaring I am right all the time, or accusing someone of being a dim wit.
Richard
summary right there…and the classic Theistic Evolutionary fallacy…“if the science is right, we can have faith”
There are entire posts on these forums where it is claimed that people are here because they were losing their faith because science disagreed with their existing denominational theology so im not making this up here.
Why is that wrong? Well because of the following text authored by the Apostle Paul:
Romans 11:19-22****Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith. Do not be haughty, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, He may not spare you either.
The problem there is, fundamentally Theistic Evolution comes to the bible from that perspective first. “we are Darwinian Christians”. I have to wonder what would happen to all those Darwinian Christians should it turn out in the future that Darwin was completely wrong?
See for me, if YEC turns out to be wrong…nothing changes. Nothing changes because if YEC is wrong, l end up the same as the atheist…God is a fairytale…so i have nothing to lose in fact. However, for the TEist, well most of them are worshiping the wrong god anyway…they are focused entirely on science first and theology second. If the bible aligns with the science, only then we have faith. That is not the biblical model.
To clarify my above point…how many individuals here believe Mormons are Christians and are going to be saved?
(given mormonism is salvation by works and its members believe that they will elevate to the status of gods who go on to create their own worlds like this one…it is fundamentally NOT Christian religion, theologically most Mormons will perish)
I have answered this claim so many times already…its fundamentally wrong.
- The Genre argument fails simply because Moses wrote Genesis 1500 years before Christ (creation and the Flood narratives)…Christ and the apostle Peter wrote about the same flood in A.D 30-AD 60. These are different cultural influences, different authors, and different languages more than 1000 years apart! There is simply no defensible argument for you there…is absolute rubbish.
- Context is also nonsense…context is exactly the reason why the YEC argument wins…we have loads of other supporting cross referenced scriptures by other writers who support the literal reading of the Creation and flood accounts in the bible. The genre side have very few cross referenced bible texts that support their claims (almost none in fact). They almost always use external sources (most of whom are very recent/modern) in order to attempt to find credibility in interpretation…and these sources also do not use cross referenced scripture to ensure they have the correct interpretation of ancient language.
- Bible themes - the over riding Biblical theme is physical consequences for sin. Adam and Eve were physically clothed to cover their nakedness…an animal was physically killed to clothe them. The Ten commandments were written on tablets of stone by the finger of God directly…that’s a physical event. Christ was incarnate, lived, died, rose, and ascended into heaven against the laws of science PHYSICALLY!!! The Second Coming is a physical event according to Biblical themes. Revelation 21 describes a literal event where there is no more pain, suffering, tears, or death…clearly physical.
If the fall of man in Genesis was not literal, then neither would salvation be literal. The entire gospel would be allegorical, however, the overwhelming them of the bible simply does not present it that way.
That leaves the only option left…to claim Genesis is a genre type story used to educate us followers on the ways of religious/Christian morality. As ive said before, Social Sciences already have tested and shown that morality came from Evolutionary Social experimentation via the Darwinian model. Attempting to insert God into that experimentation is not realistic…there is no way to test and therefore verify that claim. As a result, due to a lack of “Literal” supporting evidence, its a fairytale. The only real supporting evidence is the scientific one with real results…hence the google AI response ive illustrate earlier in answer to the question “where did morality come from?” (social experimentation…our evidence says we did it ourselves…no god)
Sorry but those claims are false. Some might even say that they give a false testimony about the disagreeing brothers and sisters.
It seems that you have a lot of assumptions that do not hold closer inspection.
You assume that those who do not agree with your interpretation are ‘Darwinian Christians’ that worship science more than God. That is simply not true.
Truth is important for me. Search for truth is the reason why my interpretation has changed from YEC to something that can stand critical inspection. If someone would discover evidence showing that the Earth and life is young or that there was a recent global flood, I would correct my interpretations about Genesis accordingly but it would not otherwise affect my faith.
You assume that if your narrow interpretation is somehow wrong, then the whole gospel collapses. Hey, I assume that Jesus would not agree with you.
What is the gospel? When Jesus spoke about the gospel, He spoke about the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is close, the King was victorious, paid the debts, defeated the enemies and we can find forgiveness and new life as citizens of the Kingdom, as children of God. That is possible because of what Jesus did. That is the gospel.
Why do we need forgiveness? Because we have rebelled against the will of God, done bad things. If you think that we need forgiveness because of what A&E did, argue with Ezekiel, chapter 18.
What about ‘Original sin’? I think the concept has been labelled with a misleading name. We do not inherit sin and it does not doom us to Hell.
We have a tendency to rebel against the rule of God, wanting to be the Lord of our own life, instead of obeying God. We seek benefits to ourselves and our relatives, instead of treating others like God wants. Should that be called ‘Original sin’? I do not recommend that.
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- I think you ought submit your stuff to Chat GPT:
- Here’s a detailed critique of this post, addressing both logical structure and theological claims:
The All-or-Nothing Fallacy
“See for me, if YEC turns out to be wrong…nothing changes. Nothing changes because if YEC is wrong, I end up the same as the atheist…God is a fairytale…so I have nothing to lose in fact.”
This statement implies an all-or-nothing approach: if one interpretation of Genesis (YEC, Young Earth Creationism) is wrong, then the entire Bible collapses and God is a fairytale.
- Problem: This overlooks the fact that many Christians hold alternative interpretations (e.g., Old Earth Creationism, Theistic Evolution) and still affirm God’s existence and the truth of the gospel.
- Example: The Church Fathers (e.g., Augustine) didn’t hold to a literal 6-day creation, yet still affirmed the historicity of Christ and the gospel.
The argument rests on a false dilemma: either YEC is true, or God doesn’t exist. This ignores the nuanced positions between those extremes.
Mischaracterizing TEists
“…for the TEist, well most of them are worshiping the wrong god anyway…they are focused entirely on science first and theology second.”
This is a sweeping generalization:
- Not all theistic evolutionists (TEists) “worship science.” Many affirm the authority of Scripture while seeing evolution as God’s providential means.
- Many TEists see theology and science as complementary — not a hierarchy where one must come before the other.
Accusing them of worshiping “the wrong god” is a straw man—it misrepresents their position as if they only care about science and neglect biblical faith entirely.
The Literal Fall and Allegorical Salvation
“If the fall of man in Genesis was not literal, then neither would salvation be literal.”
This argument assumes that the historicity of Adam and Eve is the only possible foundation for the gospel.
- While it’s true that Paul in Romans 5 compares Adam and Christ (the “two-Adam” theology), many theologians (including within mainstream Christianity) see the theological truth of the Fall (human sinfulness, separation from God) as compatible with a non-literal reading of Genesis 1–3.
- It’s possible to affirm a historical Christ and real salvation while seeing Genesis 1–3 as mythic or allegorical teaching true spiritual and moral realities.
Thus, this argument is overly simplistic, equating “literal Fall” with “literal salvation” without addressing more nuanced theological models.
The Overarching Problem: Misunderstanding Biblical Genre
“The entire gospel would be allegorical, however, the overwhelming theme of the Bible simply does not present it that way.”
This lumps all of Scripture into a single genre—literal history.
- But the Bible contains multiple genres: poetry, parable, historical narrative, apocalyptic visions, wisdom literature.
- Genesis 1–3 in particular has been read by many scholars and theologians as a theological narrative (like parable) conveying deep truths about human nature, God, and sin—even if not literal historical events.
- The “overwhelming theme of the Bible” is about redemption—which can be taught through historical events and through theological narratives.
Summary of the Critique:
The post uses false dilemmas (YEC or nothing)
It misrepresents theistic evolutionists’ faith and motivation
It oversimplifies the connection between the Fall and salvation
It ignores genre differences in Scripture interpretation
This doesn’t mean YEC can’t be a valid conviction for some believers—it’s one way of interpreting the data—but dismissing alternative interpretations as atheistic or fake Christianity is theologically narrow and doesn’t do justice to the rich diversity within historic Christian faith. Let me know if you’d like me to rephrase this critique or tailor it for a particular audience (e.g., a Christian audience, a science-minded one, or a mix)!
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We observe what is in the here and now which can then be used to confirm our theories of what happened in the past. This is how forensic scientists determine guilt in a court of law, as one example.
Yes, that’s how science works. For things we can’t directly observe we construct theories, and we test those theories with the observations we can make.
Again, theories and observations are separate things. You don’t observe a theory.
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But you treat it as a fact.
And you cannot see the hypocrisy in that.
Richard