I wonder how many religious people take their creation myths as 'absolute truth.' Sure, there's the odd Young Earth Creationist around, but I have to imagine that the average Christian doesn't think that Genesis is meant as literal truth (Catholics, for example, acknowledge the science of evolution). Same goes for most religions, I'd think.
It's definitely an interesting question, but a minor nit about your comment: evolution is not really about the origin of the universe, just the origin of species. So it feels a bit out of place to state that Catholics have no problem with evolution since evolution and Genesis are a bit orthogonal. Obviously, there are bits of the Genesis story that could be considered counter to what evolution shows -- if taken literally -- but...
Nah, that's fair criticism, but my point is really just that at least some large subset of Christians doctrinally accept a scientific explanation for the origin of species. My instinct is that many of those Christians wouldn't have that much trouble reconciling the Big Bang theory with their religion.
Now that you mention it, someone at Reddit just asked a few minutes ago if the Big Bang is the 'answer' to the creation of the universe, and one of the replies was
> No. That is just so called scientists guessing. Everyone knows existence was created 4000 years ago by God. Anyone that tells you otherwise is delusional.[0]
Well, where did the universe come from? Where did time come from? When did it begin? There are certain things the answers to which goes beyond the bounds of the naive logic we are familiar with.
The Bible says that God has no beginning (or end), he exists outside the bounds of time. Though it is hard to wrap our heads around that concept, there is no reason to think it is not possible, considering the rhetorical questions above.
One thing I've noticed is that there is huge spectrum of beliefs about what God is:
On the one end God is just some kind of vague abstract energy that acts akin to some force fate and ends up not being that different to an agnostic or scientific viewpoint of the world.
On the other end you get a highly personified God that thinks in a human-like way with highly specific wants and desires who acts as a moral authority in addition to being a creator (although the rationale behind them being a moral authority never seems to be explained)
I think God as a metaphor for the unknown needs little justification (as you say nobody really has a better explanation). But God as a human-like moral authority doesn't in any way follow from that, and there is lots of reason to think that there is no such God.
> although the rationale behind them being a moral authority never seems to be explained
Isn't that a consequence of the is-ought problem?[0] Where can "oughts" come from? Perhaps this is the same sort of question as "From where does the state derive its authority to impose laws?".
> There are certain things the answers to which goes beyond the bounds of the naive logic we are familiar with.
I don't think answering any of these questions are beyond the bounds of our abilities to inquire rationally, form explanations, improve those explanations through criticism, etc. It's true that there will be no "ultimate answer," because for any current best explanation we have about the origins or workings of the world we can ask the question "why is it that way rather than some other way?" And if we later develop an explanation that answers that question, we can ask the same question of that new explanation. That process will never end, but that doesn't mean any one instance of that question will be beyond our abilities.
I mean science says the same thing about the big bang. That 'outside' of our universe that it's completely possible for time to have no meaning. It's also possible for the universe to be infinite, yet have a very recent beginning.
I had a very good conversation with a Christian friend about this. For him using God to explain the more immediate questions was a more satisfying answer even if God itself was left unexplained, whereas I found it more satisfying just to leave the immediate questions unexplained if no explanation was available. We ended up agreeing to disagree, but I think we both learnt something from each other's perspective.
If your Christian friend is correct, then he'll have an eternity to spend studying the question of where God came from, with the added advantage of having God readily available to answer his questions.
Solving just the immediate questions in this life has a nice parsimonious feel to it, actually, like dropping hints for a sequel in the first movie of a (potentially infinite?) series.
>> Sure, let's assume it's true. Where did God come from?
We can also assume it's false. Where did God come from? A human social construct to provide comforting answers per geographic or cultural associations.
As another commented said, the bible says God has no beginning, so there you go.
More importantly though, religion is meant to explain the meaning of life, not that the chain of events that lead to it. It has fundamentally different, though not necessarily incompatible, goals than science. So in short, the answer is that from a religious perspective, it doesn't matter.
Both can be true. God created the universe 4000 years ago, but did so by creating in his mind a big bang and fast-forwarding time to 2000BC. Then instantiating physically what he was thinking of.
It's also possible God will do this but hasn't yet. When God finally decides to do it is when all the computation will occur, including the computation that comprises our consciousness on April 20, 2022.
There's a name for this in theology but I forget it now. It's the reasoning behind praying for people in the past. Not their souls now, but their actual living selves in the past. I think the idea is that timeless god will hear your prayers from the future and may be influenced by them backwards in time. idk I'm not a theologian.
I'm not familiar with the theological concept you're referring to, but it does reminds me of something that bothered me as a young child. I remember thinking it was very odd that people would pray for an outcome they knew had already occurred, but they simply didn't know what the outcome was yet.
> people would pray for an outcome they knew had already occurred
From God's perspective, though, it doesn't matter if the prayer occurs before or after the event, (assuming God exists outside of time and knows everything that has happened and will ever happen).
That might seem to open the possibility that believers could pray for events to be retroactively changed from a known (to them) outcome to a different outcome (rewriting their memories in the process), but presumably the claim is that God's will is revealed through the outcomes themselves, and the believer should update their desires based on that revealed will.
When I meet her, I'll have to ask her if she used async/await or had to struggle with the borrow checker when programming this. Also, is this kind of time manipulation memory-safe? I shudder to think of the race conditions that might occur.
My favorite take on the Christian god is from Eriugena. The general premise is that time is a feature of creation, therefor god is without time. But, being without time, god is unable to change. In order to "grow" god "descended" into a lower state of being by creating the universe. The universe has time, and therefore can change. God's growth comes from the change in the universe folding back into god through the knowledge acquired by man as man ascends into a higher state of being at death.
Given that take - there is no distinction between the universe being billions of years old and the universe having been "fast forwarded" to 2000BC. This is being perceived by an entity that sits outside the passage of time. Everything is arguably "fast forwarded" in that the entirety of creation - along with everything before and after creation - is being experienced simultaneously by a timeless being.
I prefer Next Tuesdayism. The universe will have been created next Tuesday, with the physical appearance of being billions of years old. Your current "consciousness" is merely the memory you'll think you have next Tuesday.
It says the earth existed for an unknown period of time, before God began to prepare it for habitation. The period of this preparation is also not given (it could be arbitrarily long). Genesis also gives an order of appearance of life (plants -> animals -> man) that roughly agrees with the fossil record.
There is nothing in Genesis that is at variance with known science, and nothing in it that actually supports a young earth.
As a Christian and a believer that evolution is a beautiful thing, the Genesis story increases my faith; even just the idea of whether or not there was a finite Beginning, seems easy for a religion-crafter to get wrong.
> There is nothing in Genesis that is at variance with known science
This is so absurd a claim I don't know where to begin. But how about the claim that the sky is a vault which separate the waters above from the waters below? The sky is not actually a vault with water above it, at least according to science.
Or how about the claim that the sun and moon and stars was created after plants and trees were created?
Apparently before the flood there was massive amounts of water suspended high up in the atmosphere (but not falling as rain, hence disbelief of Noah's contemporaries about a coming flood). There was also water stored in rivers, lakes, oceans, and (ice?) on the surface of the earth. Most of the water in the atmosphere is what fell in the flood, causing some changes to the crust on the earth, and initiating the water cycle as we know it today.
But you don't even have to accept this sequence of events. Even now we have large amounts of water suspended in the atmosphere (as clouds) and large amounts on the earth's surface (as described above). I'm not sure what is inaccurate about the description of this general state of affairs in Genesis.
The definition of water written about in the bible could not include water vapor suspended in air because that concept was unknown to the authors and not among the major contemporary theories of matter. It is strange to use modern understandings to justify historical statements made without those modern understandings.
My implicit claim is that the information in Genesis is coming from a superior source who would know, but you are saying that Genesis cannot be accurate because those who wrote it could not know what was scientifically accurate.
The writers of the Bible books generally claimed that the information they wrote down was inspired.
I think that's a logical trap - it implies that the contents of the bible are a direct transcription from a being with superior (or, in it's word, perfect) knowledge. If that's the case then mortal interpretation of the bible can understood to have been historically flawed until... well, until when? Can we understand it in a truthful manner now or are we still too imperfect beings to comprehend its actual truth? And, if we're failing to understand it properly are we doing so for good or ill - we know that some of the previous flawed interpretations were pretty awful. Declaring crusades and wars in the name of the Bible is an abhorrent interpretation to most modern christians - so how are we to know how correct our interpretations are?
I don't think believers of the Bible claim that the Creation account in Genesis was written by a human who watched the events unfold, and who understood it enough to write an account based on their own understanding.
Instead, it is claimed to be a divine revelation, given by God to explain (using language and ideas that would be most useful to most people) the important truths about the Creation process and Man's place within it.
As a Christian and a believer in the Bible I can attest that I see it exactly in the way you describe. The factual parts of the narrative / poem for the rest of the Bible as I see it are:
1. God is the architect of the universe
2. God is eternal and has no beginning
3. There was probably a historical Adam and Eve.
The rest is extremely important for the philosophical basis of:
1. sinfulness of humanity
2. dignity of humanity (image of God)
3. the problem that justice can't be both restorative and retributive
4. inkling toward a solution to 3. (forgiveness/sacrifice/charity)
> But how about the claim that the sky is a vault which separate the waters above from the waters below?
I don't think claims about vaults of water should be read as an architectural blueprint or an Ikea furniture assembly instruction booklet.
There is a three dimensional region of the atmosphere which is above sea level and below the level at which clouds (floating bodies of water) can form. It's perfectly reasonable to poetically call that region a vault that separates the waters above from the waters below.
> Or how about the claim that the sun and moon and stars was created after plants and trees were created?
That's a great point, actually, although note that the narrative starts with the creation of "light" and the day-night cycle, before the creation of the trees and plants. Therefore one interpretation of the fourth day narrative is that it describes the sky becoming clearer so that these individual bodies can be seen.
I think there is still some speculation among scientists about what the atmosphere of the early Earth was like, but it seems that it was greatly influenced by volcanism, and there was a thick haze of hydrocarbons for a large period of its history.
> Therefore one interpretation of the fourth day narrative is that it describes the sky becoming clearer so that these individual bodies can be seen.
It is not an interpretation which is justified by the text, but sure - you can interpret any text any way you want. But you are basically just writing your own text then.
Like I say, the text states that there is light and the day-night cycle before the sun, moon, and stars are created; so the text does not allow for a simplistic interpretation of the individual words in isolation.
You could conclude that there is no logically consistent interpretation possible, and if your prior is that the narrative can't be correct then I suppose that's an appealing conclusion, but I think it is just as reasonable to say that the text is describing (at least poetically) the subjective experience of a nominal observer on the surface of the Earth as it is being formed.
No, it is not reasonable, because you are applying your interpretation ("created" means "made visible") only in the specific passage where you find the literal meaning uncomfortable. If you at least were consistent in your interpretation, your conclusion would be that God didn't create anything, but just made things visible for an observer.
> only in the specific passage where you find the literal meaning uncomfortable.
The simplistic meaning is not "uncomfortable", it's ruled out (or at least made questionable) by the text which precedes it. For the other passages there is no such apparent contradiction.
> If you at least were consistent in your interpretation
For all the other passages, there is no difference between "creating" and "making visible", because there was nothing obscuring the view of the observer. (I suppose that most of the fish species wouldn't have been visible because of the depths or areas where they live, but an observer could have noticed at least some local sea creatures).
The sky being a vault, or dome or touchable FIRMament, like "terrible crystal" (Ezekiel 1:22), separating the waters from the waters.
I think it relates to the common Sky on Earth and Sky Earth Separation theme in myths from on around the world. Often people/ancestors/heroes/gods seem to have lived in a hollow between Sky Father and Earth Mother. Later in time both always get separated.
Now for the interpretation - What is Sky Father?
Is it the sky as we know it? We can't touch it, so probably not. Suppose it actually is something touchable, that looks like "terrible crystal", maybe even looks like the sky that we know. Something where people could take shelter in like in a vault, or cave.
I think the Sky Father is some kind of (ice age?) glacier and the hollow between Sky and Earth is a glacial cave. Ice is a terrible cold crystal, firm, touchable, looks like the sky. Ice caves exist, but they dont provide a great home, but they separate the waters above from the waters below. There is always something to find with subterranean water in mythology.. Now if there is a geothermal spring below a glacier or chunk of ice, it could form a survivable space, that ticks all the marks.
Many myths from all around the world share those elements to some degree, but I will here point only at one particular example, from - least expected - the Māori, that I find especially interesting, because of its mentioning of "extreme cold".
Some excerpts (my comments marked with > at line begin):
The Rangi-nui [great sky], which stands above, felt a desire towards Papa-tua-nuku [the earth], whose belly was turned up [towards him]; he desired her as a wife. So Rangi came down to Papa. In that period the amount of light was nil; absolute and complete darkness [po-kutikuti kakarauri] prevailed; there was no sun, no moon, no stars, no clouds, no light, no mist—no ripples stirred the surface of ocean; no breath of air, a complete and absolute stillness.
And so Rangi-nui dwelt with Papa-tua-nuku as his wife; and then he set [hikaia = whakato, to set, plant] plants to cover the nakedness of Papa; for her armpits, her head, and the body; and after that the smaller trees to clothe them both, for the body of the earth was naked. Subsequently he placed the upstanding trees of the forest, and now Papa felt a great warmth, which was all-embracing.
> and some more.
Because Rangi-nui overlaid and completely covered Papa-tua-nuku, the growth of all things could not mature, nor could anything bear fruit [or increase]; they were in an unstable condition, floating about the Ao-pouri [the world of darkness], and this was their appearance: some were crawling [after the manner of lizards], some were upright with the arms held up, some were lying with the knees partly drawn p. 118 up, some lying on their sides, some were lying stretched out at full length, some on their backs, some were stooping, some with their heads bent down, some with their legs drawn up, some embracing, some kicking out with legs and arms, some kneeling, some standing, some inhaling deep breaths, some with exhausted breath, some crawling, some walking, some feeling about in the dark, some arising, some gazing, some sitting still, and in many other attitudes—they were all within the embrace of Rangi-nui and Papa.6
> Sounds cramped and not a nice place to be..
It was after this manner that they dwelt in Pō, within the space included in the embrace of their parents. It was very long that condition of affairs existed; until at last a faint glimmering of light, a scintillation like the light of a star was seen, or like the Will-o-the-wisp at night. And now commenced a desire on the part of the family of gods to go forth from between their parents to follow the faint appearance of...
You will note that all those things you mention are only impossible to you because you choose to believe the their impossibility.
Consider, if something happens once in a billions years, does the fact that you (and everyone who has ever existed) have never seen it happen necessarily mean it is impossible?
Scientific inquiry requires objective proof OF EXISTANCE. We know that humans can be deceived, both by themselves and others.
You might be asking for scientific proof of non-existance, but that cannot be provided for pretty much anything. For instance, you cannot (yet) prove that there is NOT a teapot orbiting at the same distance from the sun as Pluto.
By claiming we need to disprove God, you are missing the point. You're being asked to PROVE God.
Much of religion is desirable (godlike friendly entities, everlasting life, real justice). However we have no evidence any of it is true. I wish some of it was. Wrath of god, less desirable.
I'm sure you believe in a lot of things for which you have no personal proof.
The information in Genesis gives information about several things that agree with known science (even at a time where there was no modern scientific knowledge to speak of). Now, if there are other things in it that seem to go beyond our experience, there is no reason to suddenly doubt it's accuracy.
Also, about the null hypothesis thing: Let's say I claim I'm a sentient being. You dispute that claim. On who should the burden of proof fall?
> I'm sure you believe in a lot of things for which you have no personal proof.
I believe the only accurate and objective measure of truth is the scientific process. In the absence of running the tests myself, I would examine the process taken and make a trust-based assessment about the practitioners. Not ideal, I agree.
It seems likely that your statement is true, I can't think of any such belief right now.
> The information in Genesis gives information about several things that agree with known science ... there is no reason to suddenly doubt it's accuracy.
The internet is full of both truth and lies. Just because there is some truth, does not mean there are NOT also some lies / mistakes. The same is true of all works.
Just because some part of Genesis (or Tolkien's the Hobbit) matches reality (for instance, eating delicious apples)... does not mean the whole thing is accurate truth.
> Let's say I claim I'm a sentient being. You dispute that claim. On who should the burden of proof fall?
This is some deep ethics. Initially I would look to prove that you could effect your environment somehow. God clearly cannot, based on experiments relating to Prayer.
One means would be a Turing test?
Generally these are very deep discussions relating to sentience, the effects of that. I'd say that discussing that here would be a distraction from the proof thing.
But we do have evidence that the things in the Bible are true. However, to appreciate the kind evidence offered requires a change in mindset. If you are looking for mathematical proof, you are not going to find it. But there are many things about which we can gain knowledge with a heuristic approach, not a hard algorithmic one.
If you approach things with an open mind and consider the witness of people who witnessed the events, the agreement with known scientific facts, the satisfying answers given to the deep questions of life, and the sound advice given regarding practical aspects of life which works, then the logical conclusion is that the Bible contains accurate information that comes from a higher source, God.
But these things have been politicized. It is anathema for most scientists (and people who follow the science and think they know so much) to admit the limits of the simplistic scientific method that they follow.
No, they're impossible because modern science doesn't allow for them, and because no evidence exists for them. The bar wasn't personal belief, the bar was "variance with known science."
> Genesis also gives an order of appearance of life (plants -> animals -> man) that roughly agrees with the fossil record.
"Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams[b] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the Lord God formed a man[c] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
That seems pretty clear and explicit: man -> plants -> animals.
And then the first woman is formed from the rib of the first man.
Not to mention earth existing before the stars. Before even light!
How can you say this is all consistent with known science? Do you consider it a mistranslation or an absurdly contorted metaphor or something?
> "Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams[b] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
This passage is simply saying there was no human agriculture on the earth, because rain as we know did not exist, and there were no humans to do the work.
> 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
Generally plants were existing, but this passage is saying that just prior to forming man, a special garden was planted for them to start with. In effect God was starting an agricultural project to hand over the the first man, for them to dominate the flora with time.
> And then the first woman is formed from the rib of the first man.
What is impossible about that?
> Not to mention earth existing before the stars. Before even light!
> > "Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams[b] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.
> This passage is simply saying there was no human agriculture on the earth, because rain as we know did not exist, and there were no humans to do the work.
Assuming that that passage is talking about human agriculture is a very generous interpretation - it is specifically saying that plants had no reason to exist prior to human beings, and that would conflict with plant fossils (and a whole bunch of other fossils) pre-dating 2000 BC. I know it isn't uncommon to argue that fossils were the production of God to give us something to assemble in the main halls of our museums but I find that argument to be extremely weak and rely on God assuming they'd need to give us something we didn't know we'd need if it didn't exist. If there were no fossils predating, say, 500 AD, we'd probably try and come up with scientific justifications as to why fossils can only survive 1500 years.
> > 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
> Generally plants were existing, but this passage is saying that just prior to forming man, a special garden was planted for them to start with. In effect God was starting an agricultural project to hand over the the first man, for them to dominate the flora with time.
Again, I think you're reading in some assumptions into the text - I've actually always read that passage to imply that the world was essentially an unformed wasteland prior to the creation of the garden of eden - that the "made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground" was a sort of spontaneous creation of life.
> > And then the first woman is formed from the rib of the first man.
> What is impossible about that?
It is strange that in four thousand years of existence not once have we seen asexual rib-based reproduction occur again spontaneously - if this option was on the table you'd assume it'd occasionally happen again. Also, it clashes with a lot of our understanding of genetics, actually in a way worse than the first man being created from the rib of a woman - there is an x-chromosom that would need to be created somewhere in this process.
> Assuming that that passage is talking about human agriculture is a very generous interpretation - it is specifically saying that plants had no reason to exist prior to human beings,
Since earlier in Genesis it is made clear that plants were created before animals, I think it is the only consistent interpretation. Also, maybe "Agriculture" was not the best word to use; I meant any deliberate human action on the flora, not necessarily to produce food.
> Again, I think you're reading in some assumptions into the text - I've actually always read that passage to imply that the world was essentially an unformed wasteland prior to the creation of the garden of eden - that the "made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground" was a sort of spontaneous creation of life.
All the plants in the garden were already existing; that expression "made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground" apparently means the garden was a showcase of the wonderful variety of plant life existing.
>> And then the first woman is formed from the rib of the first man.
> What is impossible about that?
I honestly don't know where to begin. Perhaps you can explain how that is compatible with what we know of the biological history of genders, sexual reproduction and anatomy?
>> Not to mention earth existing before the stars. Before even light!
> Nowhere does Genesis say or imply that
It's literally the first thing it says:
"1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day."
Earth, then light.
Then, later (after land, vegetation, the sky, etc), stars:
"14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night..."
> "1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day."
Earth, then light.
This is talking from the perspective of an observer on earth. Light in a general, diffuse form started to penetrate the atmosphere at some point (this is the "creation" of light at 1:3). Then there was an expanse (vault) created to form a division between water below and those above. For an observer on earth, light would have only gradually penetrated the waters above. Eventually, the sun and moon and stars, and their motions, would become visible (1:14-18)
So, there are a lot of tricky translation issues in B'reisheet (the first being that we're calling it Genesis, but no comparable word actually appears in the text). This is not too surprising since a lot of routine concepts today didn't really exist when it was written. However, there are several things that seem not only inconsistent with modern scientific consensus but inconsistent within the book itself.
Most obvious is that in chapter 1, animals are said to exist before people ("fifth day", "sixth day"). In chapter 2, however, this happens in the reverse order ("It is not good that man should be alone... formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air"). The latter disagrees with not only the former, but also with basically all evidence we have.
Scientists present the Big Bang as the best picture of the process of the start of our known universe according to the data and theories so far derived - a not-completely certain process ongoing discovery. Even if the average religious worshiper might be skeptical or view things metaphorically, religions don't present their creation myths as anything like a process of ongoing discovery.
To be fair, a fairly basic premise in Christianity is that the truth is unknowable, we as humans are too limited to grasp it, and it is only through divine revelation we may have access to the truth. You really shouldn't be finding people claiming to have all the truths about God's acts, plans, and nature -- at least that's a sign they haven't quite grasped fairly central themes in the faith.
Interestingly, there's an extensive tradition of negative theology, that is the study of what we can't know about God. This isn't exclusively a Christian thing, but seems to be the result of the Skeptic tradition of Hellenic philosophy coming into contact with the Abrahamic faiths.
John Scotus wrote that "God is not, because he transcends being". Something to think about.
Religion is all about discarding pieces of data that you don't like while fixating on the pieces you find meaningful. Some people believe the planet is flat, if people can believe that I assume people can at this point believe anything.
Not all Catholics: the Kolbe Center for the Study of Creation (kolbecenter.org) attempts to convince others that Catholics ought believe in young earth creationism. (To be precise, they advocate that the church never said one could believe in evolution, rather that evolution could be studied to try to reconcile against traditional understandings of creation, which many took as license to believe in evolution).
Even the average Catholic is required to believe that all humans are descended from a literal first man (Humani Generis, p. 37).
I would posit that someone believing in YEC is strongly correlated to their willingness to accept and embrace other unpopular and/or hard tenets of their religion. There are, for instance, plenty of Catholics who believe in evolution, but most of those do not go beyond what Catholicism requires in the way of fasting or sexuality. Thus raising the question 'what makes someone a religious person?'...
Their insight is that you can get all the benefits of believing in evolution just by acting as if you believe it, without believing it.
And the same applies to all facts. Scientists, of course, all rely on the same insight, and don't believe anything except experiments; plus God, if they care to.
which is why the car salesman and dragon tyrant crying "oh wee live in a simulationNNNNN" is just replacing god with ai or whatever the fuck they want without adherence to actual observation. Instead, they're just making up hypothetical probabilities and living in said delusion.
Ah yes the old fallacy: science or spirituality. Obviously can’t have both as that would require more complicated thought processes than you can fathom. This is a common stumbling block for fledgling minds. Reality is, our best scientists were and to a large extent continue to be Christians. But be dumb and feel superior all you want. You will have plenty of company. Meanwhile, my company will be these people:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christians_in_scienc...
These are people you and everyone else should be familiar with. Their beliefs are well documented. No need for “perhaps.” They’ve written eloquently about their beliefs and an intellectually curious, or merely open minded person, can benefit from exploring those thoughts and ideas. It’s not something to cower in fear of. When people who are more intelligent espouse strongly held beliefs that you don’t understand, that’s a good time to ask more questions rather than close your mind and stop reading.
Why is not a scientific question. Perhaps you mean, what is the cause of the Big Bang. Since nothing that could have caused the Big Bang is observable, it falls outside physics, but there are some mathematical theories around it.
Why is the mother of all scientific questions. If you just keep asking "why is that?" every time you see something strange, you'll learn so many things. Not everything has a cause, that doesn't mean it doesn't have a why to investigate.
102 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 281 ms ] threadIt was never declared to be absolute truth.
Maybe I'm being a bit too pedantic.
> No. That is just so called scientists guessing. Everyone knows existence was created 4000 years ago by God. Anyone that tells you otherwise is delusional.[0]
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/u85guq/c...
Sure, let's assume it's true. Where did God come from?
The Bible says that God has no beginning (or end), he exists outside the bounds of time. Though it is hard to wrap our heads around that concept, there is no reason to think it is not possible, considering the rhetorical questions above.
On the one end God is just some kind of vague abstract energy that acts akin to some force fate and ends up not being that different to an agnostic or scientific viewpoint of the world.
On the other end you get a highly personified God that thinks in a human-like way with highly specific wants and desires who acts as a moral authority in addition to being a creator (although the rationale behind them being a moral authority never seems to be explained)
I think God as a metaphor for the unknown needs little justification (as you say nobody really has a better explanation). But God as a human-like moral authority doesn't in any way follow from that, and there is lots of reason to think that there is no such God.
Isn't that a consequence of the is-ought problem?[0] Where can "oughts" come from? Perhaps this is the same sort of question as "From where does the state derive its authority to impose laws?".
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem
I don't think answering any of these questions are beyond the bounds of our abilities to inquire rationally, form explanations, improve those explanations through criticism, etc. It's true that there will be no "ultimate answer," because for any current best explanation we have about the origins or workings of the world we can ask the question "why is it that way rather than some other way?" And if we later develop an explanation that answers that question, we can ask the same question of that new explanation. That process will never end, but that doesn't mean any one instance of that question will be beyond our abilities.
Solving just the immediate questions in this life has a nice parsimonious feel to it, actually, like dropping hints for a sequel in the first movie of a (potentially infinite?) series.
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/robert_browning_108884
We can also assume it's false. Where did God come from? A human social construct to provide comforting answers per geographic or cultural associations.
More importantly though, religion is meant to explain the meaning of life, not that the chain of events that lead to it. It has fundamentally different, though not necessarily incompatible, goals than science. So in short, the answer is that from a religious perspective, it doesn't matter.
From God's perspective, though, it doesn't matter if the prayer occurs before or after the event, (assuming God exists outside of time and knows everything that has happened and will ever happen).
That might seem to open the possibility that believers could pray for events to be retroactively changed from a known (to them) outcome to a different outcome (rewriting their memories in the process), but presumably the claim is that God's will is revealed through the outcomes themselves, and the believer should update their desires based on that revealed will.
Given that take - there is no distinction between the universe being billions of years old and the universe having been "fast forwarded" to 2000BC. This is being perceived by an entity that sits outside the passage of time. Everything is arguably "fast forwarded" in that the entirety of creation - along with everything before and after creation - is being experienced simultaneously by a timeless being.
> Last Thursdayism is the idea that the universe was created last Thursday, but with the physical appearance of being billions of years old.[0]
[0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism
It says the earth existed for an unknown period of time, before God began to prepare it for habitation. The period of this preparation is also not given (it could be arbitrarily long). Genesis also gives an order of appearance of life (plants -> animals -> man) that roughly agrees with the fossil record.
There is nothing in Genesis that is at variance with known science, and nothing in it that actually supports a young earth.
Yes, it turns out it's also an idea that philosophy-crafters and science-crafters can also get wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady-state_model#History
This is so absurd a claim I don't know where to begin. But how about the claim that the sky is a vault which separate the waters above from the waters below? The sky is not actually a vault with water above it, at least according to science.
Or how about the claim that the sun and moon and stars was created after plants and trees were created?
But you don't even have to accept this sequence of events. Even now we have large amounts of water suspended in the atmosphere (as clouds) and large amounts on the earth's surface (as described above). I'm not sure what is inaccurate about the description of this general state of affairs in Genesis.
My implicit claim is that the information in Genesis is coming from a superior source who would know, but you are saying that Genesis cannot be accurate because those who wrote it could not know what was scientifically accurate.
The writers of the Bible books generally claimed that the information they wrote down was inspired.
Just goes to show that people and books which claim to be divinely inspired tend not to be very reliable.
Instead, it is claimed to be a divine revelation, given by God to explain (using language and ideas that would be most useful to most people) the important truths about the Creation process and Man's place within it.
1. God is the architect of the universe
2. God is eternal and has no beginning
3. There was probably a historical Adam and Eve.
The rest is extremely important for the philosophical basis of:
1. sinfulness of humanity
2. dignity of humanity (image of God)
3. the problem that justice can't be both restorative and retributive
4. inkling toward a solution to 3. (forgiveness/sacrifice/charity)
And much more... it's a deep text.
So how about God creating the sun, moon, and stars after creating plants and trees?
I don't think claims about vaults of water should be read as an architectural blueprint or an Ikea furniture assembly instruction booklet.
There is a three dimensional region of the atmosphere which is above sea level and below the level at which clouds (floating bodies of water) can form. It's perfectly reasonable to poetically call that region a vault that separates the waters above from the waters below.
> Or how about the claim that the sun and moon and stars was created after plants and trees were created?
That's a great point, actually, although note that the narrative starts with the creation of "light" and the day-night cycle, before the creation of the trees and plants. Therefore one interpretation of the fourth day narrative is that it describes the sky becoming clearer so that these individual bodies can be seen.
I think there is still some speculation among scientists about what the atmosphere of the early Earth was like, but it seems that it was greatly influenced by volcanism, and there was a thick haze of hydrocarbons for a large period of its history.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00167...
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21598-haze-clears-on-...
It is not an interpretation which is justified by the text, but sure - you can interpret any text any way you want. But you are basically just writing your own text then.
You could conclude that there is no logically consistent interpretation possible, and if your prior is that the narrative can't be correct then I suppose that's an appealing conclusion, but I think it is just as reasonable to say that the text is describing (at least poetically) the subjective experience of a nominal observer on the surface of the Earth as it is being formed.
The simplistic meaning is not "uncomfortable", it's ruled out (or at least made questionable) by the text which precedes it. For the other passages there is no such apparent contradiction.
> If you at least were consistent in your interpretation
For all the other passages, there is no difference between "creating" and "making visible", because there was nothing obscuring the view of the observer. (I suppose that most of the fish species wouldn't have been visible because of the depths or areas where they live, but an observer could have noticed at least some local sea creatures).
I think it relates to the common Sky on Earth and Sky Earth Separation theme in myths from on around the world. Often people/ancestors/heroes/gods seem to have lived in a hollow between Sky Father and Earth Mother. Later in time both always get separated.
Now for the interpretation - What is Sky Father?
Is it the sky as we know it? We can't touch it, so probably not. Suppose it actually is something touchable, that looks like "terrible crystal", maybe even looks like the sky that we know. Something where people could take shelter in like in a vault, or cave.
I think the Sky Father is some kind of (ice age?) glacier and the hollow between Sky and Earth is a glacial cave. Ice is a terrible cold crystal, firm, touchable, looks like the sky. Ice caves exist, but they dont provide a great home, but they separate the waters above from the waters below. There is always something to find with subterranean water in mythology.. Now if there is a geothermal spring below a glacier or chunk of ice, it could form a survivable space, that ticks all the marks.
Many myths from all around the world share those elements to some degree, but I will here point only at one particular example, from - least expected - the Māori, that I find especially interesting, because of its mentioning of "extreme cold".
https://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/lww/lww3.htm
Some excerpts (my comments marked with > at line begin):
> and some more. > Sounds cramped and not a nice place to be..The part where the first man was created directly from the dust of the earth?
The part where the first woman was created from the rib of the first man?
The talking snake?
The magic trees?
The angel with the flaming sword?
The existence of God?!
Consider, if something happens once in a billions years, does the fact that you (and everyone who has ever existed) have never seen it happen necessarily mean it is impossible?
You might be asking for scientific proof of non-existance, but that cannot be provided for pretty much anything. For instance, you cannot (yet) prove that there is NOT a teapot orbiting at the same distance from the sun as Pluto.
By claiming we need to disprove God, you are missing the point. You're being asked to PROVE God.
Much of religion is desirable (godlike friendly entities, everlasting life, real justice). However we have no evidence any of it is true. I wish some of it was. Wrath of god, less desirable.
The information in Genesis gives information about several things that agree with known science (even at a time where there was no modern scientific knowledge to speak of). Now, if there are other things in it that seem to go beyond our experience, there is no reason to suddenly doubt it's accuracy.
Also, about the null hypothesis thing: Let's say I claim I'm a sentient being. You dispute that claim. On who should the burden of proof fall?
I believe the only accurate and objective measure of truth is the scientific process. In the absence of running the tests myself, I would examine the process taken and make a trust-based assessment about the practitioners. Not ideal, I agree.
It seems likely that your statement is true, I can't think of any such belief right now.
> The information in Genesis gives information about several things that agree with known science ... there is no reason to suddenly doubt it's accuracy.
The internet is full of both truth and lies. Just because there is some truth, does not mean there are NOT also some lies / mistakes. The same is true of all works.
Just because some part of Genesis (or Tolkien's the Hobbit) matches reality (for instance, eating delicious apples)... does not mean the whole thing is accurate truth.
> Let's say I claim I'm a sentient being. You dispute that claim. On who should the burden of proof fall?
This is some deep ethics. Initially I would look to prove that you could effect your environment somehow. God clearly cannot, based on experiments relating to Prayer.
One means would be a Turing test?
Generally these are very deep discussions relating to sentience, the effects of that. I'd say that discussing that here would be a distraction from the proof thing.
If you approach things with an open mind and consider the witness of people who witnessed the events, the agreement with known scientific facts, the satisfying answers given to the deep questions of life, and the sound advice given regarding practical aspects of life which works, then the logical conclusion is that the Bible contains accurate information that comes from a higher source, God.
But these things have been politicized. It is anathema for most scientists (and people who follow the science and think they know so much) to admit the limits of the simplistic scientific method that they follow.
"Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth[a] and no plant had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams[b] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the Lord God formed a man[c] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
That seems pretty clear and explicit: man -> plants -> animals.
And then the first woman is formed from the rib of the first man.
Not to mention earth existing before the stars. Before even light!
How can you say this is all consistent with known science? Do you consider it a mistranslation or an absurdly contorted metaphor or something?
This passage is simply saying there was no human agriculture on the earth, because rain as we know did not exist, and there were no humans to do the work.
> 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
Generally plants were existing, but this passage is saying that just prior to forming man, a special garden was planted for them to start with. In effect God was starting an agricultural project to hand over the the first man, for them to dominate the flora with time.
> And then the first woman is formed from the rib of the first man.
What is impossible about that?
> Not to mention earth existing before the stars. Before even light!
Nowhere does Genesis say or imply that
> This passage is simply saying there was no human agriculture on the earth, because rain as we know did not exist, and there were no humans to do the work.
Assuming that that passage is talking about human agriculture is a very generous interpretation - it is specifically saying that plants had no reason to exist prior to human beings, and that would conflict with plant fossils (and a whole bunch of other fossils) pre-dating 2000 BC. I know it isn't uncommon to argue that fossils were the production of God to give us something to assemble in the main halls of our museums but I find that argument to be extremely weak and rely on God assuming they'd need to give us something we didn't know we'd need if it didn't exist. If there were no fossils predating, say, 500 AD, we'd probably try and come up with scientific justifications as to why fossils can only survive 1500 years.
> > 8 Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."
> Generally plants were existing, but this passage is saying that just prior to forming man, a special garden was planted for them to start with. In effect God was starting an agricultural project to hand over the the first man, for them to dominate the flora with time.
Again, I think you're reading in some assumptions into the text - I've actually always read that passage to imply that the world was essentially an unformed wasteland prior to the creation of the garden of eden - that the "made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground" was a sort of spontaneous creation of life.
> > And then the first woman is formed from the rib of the first man.
> What is impossible about that?
It is strange that in four thousand years of existence not once have we seen asexual rib-based reproduction occur again spontaneously - if this option was on the table you'd assume it'd occasionally happen again. Also, it clashes with a lot of our understanding of genetics, actually in a way worse than the first man being created from the rib of a woman - there is an x-chromosom that would need to be created somewhere in this process.
Since earlier in Genesis it is made clear that plants were created before animals, I think it is the only consistent interpretation. Also, maybe "Agriculture" was not the best word to use; I meant any deliberate human action on the flora, not necessarily to produce food.
> Again, I think you're reading in some assumptions into the text - I've actually always read that passage to imply that the world was essentially an unformed wasteland prior to the creation of the garden of eden - that the "made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground" was a sort of spontaneous creation of life.
All the plants in the garden were already existing; that expression "made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground" apparently means the garden was a showcase of the wonderful variety of plant life existing.
> What is impossible about that?
I honestly don't know where to begin. Perhaps you can explain how that is compatible with what we know of the biological history of genders, sexual reproduction and anatomy?
>> Not to mention earth existing before the stars. Before even light!
> Nowhere does Genesis say or imply that
It's literally the first thing it says:
"1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day."
Earth, then light.
Then, later (after land, vegetation, the sky, etc), stars:
"14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night..."
3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day."
Earth, then light.
This is talking from the perspective of an observer on earth. Light in a general, diffuse form started to penetrate the atmosphere at some point (this is the "creation" of light at 1:3). Then there was an expanse (vault) created to form a division between water below and those above. For an observer on earth, light would have only gradually penetrated the waters above. Eventually, the sun and moon and stars, and their motions, would become visible (1:14-18)
Most obvious is that in chapter 1, animals are said to exist before people ("fifth day", "sixth day"). In chapter 2, however, this happens in the reverse order ("It is not good that man should be alone... formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air"). The latter disagrees with not only the former, but also with basically all evidence we have.
Interestingly, there's an extensive tradition of negative theology, that is the study of what we can't know about God. This isn't exclusively a Christian thing, but seems to be the result of the Skeptic tradition of Hellenic philosophy coming into contact with the Abrahamic faiths.
John Scotus wrote that "God is not, because he transcends being". Something to think about.
Even the average Catholic is required to believe that all humans are descended from a literal first man (Humani Generis, p. 37).
I would posit that someone believing in YEC is strongly correlated to their willingness to accept and embrace other unpopular and/or hard tenets of their religion. There are, for instance, plenty of Catholics who believe in evolution, but most of those do not go beyond what Catholicism requires in the way of fasting or sexuality. Thus raising the question 'what makes someone a religious person?'...
And the same applies to all facts. Scientists, of course, all rely on the same insight, and don't believe anything except experiments; plus God, if they care to.
Also, by definition, no-one is able to infer what would have happened "before" the Big Bang. Even time as we know it doesn't make sense then.
It's conditional.
It's like posting a wiki entry of those who have tenure at major universities and claiming it's because those people believe in universities.
It takes real effort to push back against the disinformation of the day.