• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Split Thread Should creationism be taught as Science?

smartcooky said:
Well it is bloody important if you are going keep making excuses and dropping hints for wrangling Creationism into a science class!!
Click to expand...
A number of posters have given reasons for not contrasting evolution and biblical creation in a science class which seem reasonable so there is no need for you to keep harping on about it. Case closed.
 
psionl0 said:
A number of posters have given reasons for not contrasting evolution and biblical creation in a science class which seem reasonable so there is no need for you to keep harping on about it. Case closed.
Click to expand...

Maybe you could offer a eulogy for the notion of creationism in the classroom.
 
psionl0 said:
No need. I don't have to apologize for those people who would rather have a personalized argument than a dispassionate discussion.
Click to expand...

Lets be honest. You love to go to war with people here, blustering and weaponising obfuscation of your own stance.

And a eulogy is not an apology.
 
Sideroxylon said:
Ex nihilo versus bringing order to a primordial chaos does seem quite different. Do not Christians see creation as the former?
Click to expand...

If I go back to my youth as a Christian, I think I believed both.

What? Contradictions are a problem? That wasn't really even the biggest one.


And being a scientifically minded Christian, I believed "Let there be light" was the Big Bang, a scientific account that mirrored the Genesis story.

So, before the Big Bang, did nothing exist? Or was there something, but compressed into an infinitely small space? By the way, that mirrors the question that we still ask today. Did the laws of nature pop into existence, and cause the Big Bang, or....what else was it? Is there some better way to describe it? There was nothing, and then there was something, but maybe the laws of nature are such that if ever there is truely and genuinely nothing, something will happen, and that "something" is the formation of 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each.

And that's a law of nature. Or is it the will of God? But those are really the same thing aren't they?


Well, anyway, that's the sort of thing I thought about all those decades ago, at least when there were no girls around.
 
psionl0 said:
A number of posters have given reasons for not contrasting evolution and biblical creation in a science class which seem reasonable so there is no need for you to keep harping on about it. Case closed.
Click to expand...

In my life it was taught in a public school science class. It took the teacher under two minutes to deliver a "the bible says goddidit" and the rest of the year to cover the more practical aspects of science.

Seemed about right to everyone present that day.

Is that the way you would have her do it? It was state law at the time and she complied.
 
Last edited:
Meadmaker said:
If I go back to my youth as a Christian, I think I believed both.

What? Contradictions are a problem? That wasn't really even the biggest one.


And being a scientifically minded Christian, I believed "Let there be light" was the Big Bang, a scientific account that mirrored the Genesis story.

So, before the Big Bang, did nothing exist? Or was there something, but compressed into an infinitely small space? By the way, that mirrors the question that we still ask today. Did the laws of nature pop into existence, and cause the Big Bang, or....what else was it? Is there some better way to describe it? There was nothing, and then there was something, but maybe the laws of nature are such that if ever there is truely and genuinely nothing, something will happen, and that "something" is the formation of 100 billion galaxies with 100 billion stars each.

And that's a law of nature. Or is it the will of God? But those are really the same thing aren't they?


Well, anyway, that's the sort of thing I thought about all those decades ago, at least when there were no girls around.
Click to expand...

I think as a scientifically minded Christian with intellectual honesty you have to reframe them like that and/or hold them as myths with a message. American Christians who have been trying to get creationism into the classroom are hostile to that approach.
 
psionl0 said:
In the thread that Darat linked to earlier, he attempted to show that nobody believes in a God that created anything ex-nihilo (let alone an entire universe).

That way he could ridicule me by calling such a creator God the "p-god".
Click to expand...

No I didn't - why you lie so much is beyond me when the clear evidence of your lying is just a click away.
 
Meadmaker said:
I, for one, have lost track of why it matters, even though it is interesting.
Click to expand...

It arose from psionI0 saying we should have "literally" Genesis in science class rooms. It demonstrates that even such an apparent clear cut statement about using the literal wording of Genesis is anything but clearcut, never mind that even amongst Christians there are various understandings of Genesis regardless of the exact wording. And as I'm glad you agree it is an interesting point, especially when discussing so called biblical literalism.
 
psionl0 said:
In the thread that Darat linked to earlier, he attempted to show that nobody believes in a God that created anything ex-nihilo (let alone an entire universe).

That way he could ridicule me by calling such a creator God the "p-god".
Click to expand...

*Sigh* so it's all about yourself again......
 
Meadmaker said:
That's interesting. I actually read it.

I'm not sure I agree, though, about being "quite clear". I think I would like to see commentary on the commentary to see if that's a general consensus among people who study ancient Hebrew.


That is.....if I cared enough to look it up, which I might, just for curiosity.
Click to expand...

Have a read of an even older translation, one many folk are unaware of, that is known as "Young's Literal Translation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young's_Literal_Translation that dates from 1890s. You see the same formation in the translation:

(Bible gateway has it as one of their searchable versions.)

In the beginning of God's preparing the heavens and the earth -- the earth hath existed waste and void, and darkness [is] on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God fluttering on the face of the waters, and God saith, `Let light be;' and light is. ...​

As I said before this is nothing new, scholars and the theologians have accepted this for many, many years. There are within Friedman's translation and commentary some parts that there is academic disagreement about (and if I recall correctly, he's publicly agreed with some of those disagreements over the years) but the start of Genesis isn't one of them.

And it is important in this discussion as when someone says "teach Genesis" as if there is a single "Genesis" that all religious folk agree on it needs to be mentioned that you have to say which Genesis you mean and of course why that one is the "correct" Genesis to teach in a school to under 16s in a science class.
 
Reformed Offlian said:
I'm a bit puzzled by this insistence that the Genesis creation account wasn't intended to describe the creation of what we think of as the universe. The account explicitly includes the sun, moon, stars, etc. The only ambiguity seems to be whether God created the primaeval "stuff" from which he fashioned such bodies. But I don't see how it can be understood *not* to include everything we can look around and see today, everything the authors understood to exist (unless you're going to suggest that the CMB is that aforementioned primaeval stuff).
Click to expand...

I actually agree with you but do understand the other point people are making. Folk who want creationism and other religious doctrines to be taught in science classes such as psionI0 want to handwave over the fact that what those religious doctrines claim today isn't what is in the texts they claim their doctrines come from. They want to say today that their gods created what we now call the "universe" but it is clear that the modern concept of universe is very different from what is in the religious texts.
 
Sideroxylon said:
I think as a scientifically minded Christian with intellectual honesty you have to reframe them like that and/or hold them as myths with a message. American Christians who have been trying to get creationism into the classroom are hostile to that approach.
Click to expand...

It's like the idea that each "day" in the creation stories in Genesis refer to an "age" not a literal 24hr day. People always (and not limited to religious folk) try to find a way to make a square peg fit into a round hole to feel better about things they want to believe in.
 
Sideroxylon said:
I think as a scientifically minded Christian with intellectual honesty you have to reframe them like that and/or hold them as myths with a message. American Christians who have been trying to get creationism into the classroom are hostile to that approach.
Click to expand...

I also think that those American Christians who want to get creationism into the classroom are predominantly of the YEC variety!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom