Creationists of the Young-Earth variety often protest that they cannot take Genesis figuratively for some very good theological reasons. If Adam never literally at the apple, then why did Jesus die on the cross to remove the sin that Adam never incurred? If Christians shouldn't take Genesis literally (and many already don't), then what other parts of the Bible should be taken figuratively rather than literally? Creation Moments asserts that when God said to rest on the seventh day it is because of the six-day Creation event; when Moses was given the Ten Commandments, the command to rest on the sabbath day was made explicitly because of Genesis 1. The anonymous author asks, if Genesis is not to be taken literally, does that mean we don't take the Ten Commandments literally?
My own answer is that I don't much care what you decide to do about the Ten Commandments. What you decide about your personal faith is up to you, but when it comes to long-settled science, the one thing that is certain is that six literal days did not happen, not by a long shot. And after one hundred and fifty years of evidence piling up in support of evolution, and over three hundred years of support for an old earth piling up in geology, no reasonable person can maintain that the entire universe came into existence, from nothing, in six days. If I meet someone who truly believes this, my first reaction is incredulity, my second sadness that such a misguided notion still exists, especially among those who should know better.
Whatever this argument is, it certainly isn't science. Science doesn't care that the seven-day week is based on a story from Hebrew mythology anymore than they care that Poseidon was thought by the Greeks to cause earthquakes. Science has answered many of the questions that once were answered by various mythologies, and this argument doesn't carry any weight. It is believed by some that the modern habit of saying "Bless you" when a person sneezes began during the years of plague because people believed a blessing a potent remedy for illness; the fact that we still use "Bless you" in no way testifies to the validity of that old belief, far from it!
We need evidence to accept the extraordinary claim that the universe came about as the result of a six-day Creation event in which a supernatural entity spoke the world into existence more or less in its present form. No evidence is forthcoming from the creationists, however, and all the available evidence points to the contrary.
The argument that Creation Moments makes in this piece is similar, and just as silly, as the argument I heard a lay minister make once. Because Jesus referred to a literal Creation, that means it must be true! Yet Jesus lived almost two thousand years before Darwin, and well over one thousand years before anything remotely resembling modern science. How would he, a First-Century carpenter from Nazareth focused on preaching, know anything about evolution? This is an argument from authority, and a particularly bad one at that. It may work for the fellow-travelers within the creationist movement, but it won't work for those who know anything about the real workings of science, which is more than can be said about most Young-Earth Creationists.
The creationists plead and preen and ramble on, without evidence or even a good argument to be found, and they still have everything to prove. This argument has been settled within the scientific community for a century: within science, only a few ideas are as certain as the theory of evolution. Someone should send Creation Moments the message, for they seem to have missed the memo.
My own answer is that I don't much care what you decide to do about the Ten Commandments. What you decide about your personal faith is up to you, but when it comes to long-settled science, the one thing that is certain is that six literal days did not happen, not by a long shot. And after one hundred and fifty years of evidence piling up in support of evolution, and over three hundred years of support for an old earth piling up in geology, no reasonable person can maintain that the entire universe came into existence, from nothing, in six days. If I meet someone who truly believes this, my first reaction is incredulity, my second sadness that such a misguided notion still exists, especially among those who should know better.
Whatever this argument is, it certainly isn't science. Science doesn't care that the seven-day week is based on a story from Hebrew mythology anymore than they care that Poseidon was thought by the Greeks to cause earthquakes. Science has answered many of the questions that once were answered by various mythologies, and this argument doesn't carry any weight. It is believed by some that the modern habit of saying "Bless you" when a person sneezes began during the years of plague because people believed a blessing a potent remedy for illness; the fact that we still use "Bless you" in no way testifies to the validity of that old belief, far from it!
We need evidence to accept the extraordinary claim that the universe came about as the result of a six-day Creation event in which a supernatural entity spoke the world into existence more or less in its present form. No evidence is forthcoming from the creationists, however, and all the available evidence points to the contrary.
The argument that Creation Moments makes in this piece is similar, and just as silly, as the argument I heard a lay minister make once. Because Jesus referred to a literal Creation, that means it must be true! Yet Jesus lived almost two thousand years before Darwin, and well over one thousand years before anything remotely resembling modern science. How would he, a First-Century carpenter from Nazareth focused on preaching, know anything about evolution? This is an argument from authority, and a particularly bad one at that. It may work for the fellow-travelers within the creationist movement, but it won't work for those who know anything about the real workings of science, which is more than can be said about most Young-Earth Creationists.
The creationists plead and preen and ramble on, without evidence or even a good argument to be found, and they still have everything to prove. This argument has been settled within the scientific community for a century: within science, only a few ideas are as certain as the theory of evolution. Someone should send Creation Moments the message, for they seem to have missed the memo.
Wait, I thought the music of the Ainur, directed by Eru/Ilúvatar, created the world. WTF? I think you are all agents of Melkor, trying to trick me. I won't stand for this, damn you!
ReplyDelete