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_Abyssinia
Guest
Where in the Bible does it say how old humans are?
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Aelred_Minor
Guest
:crying:
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tabycat
Guest
It does not say how old human are.
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didymus
Guest
If you look there was a six-point drop from “evolved with God guiding” (a crude formulation but but the box I’d check) corresponding to a six-point rise in “God created humans in present form”.
I suspect the results not a shift in scientific belief but the extent to which creationism is a badge (or an identity marker as Jimmy Akin puts it) of conservatism for some people. It might not normally be a big issue for them but feeling themselves under attack.
I suspect the results not a shift in scientific belief but the extent to which creationism is a badge (or an identity marker as Jimmy Akin puts it) of conservatism for some people. It might not normally be a big issue for them but feeling themselves under attack.
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Et_Cetera
Guest
This is very disheartening…
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Nec5
Guest
This is not a big deal.
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Holly3278
Guest
Is Fundamentalism really that widespread here in the United States?
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JimG
Guest
As with most polls, the way the questions are worded leaves room for ambiguity and probably none of the 3 possible answers actually coincides with a persons actual view of the matter.
Answer 1) is that humans developed from lower forms over millions of years with God guiding the process. Answer 3) is that God created humans pretty much in their present form sometime in the past 10,000 years or so.
Now, recorded human history only goes back about 6,000 years or so. Anthropological history goes back much further. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for a person to surmise that true human beings are those evidenced in recorded history. Most Christians believe that humans are a composite of body and soul, and that the body may have evolved but not the soul. Many Christians believe that the human body is the result of an evolutionary process occurring over millions of years, but that at some point in time God selected a pair and infused into them a spiritual soul.
The poll answers don’t provide any possible answer reflecting that belief. A Christian might validly answer ‘yes’ to both 1) and 3) with some reservations, but the respondent is limited to only one possible unsatisfactory answer out of three, none of which may reflect his actual beliefs.
This is why polls tend to be misleading.
Answer 1) is that humans developed from lower forms over millions of years with God guiding the process. Answer 3) is that God created humans pretty much in their present form sometime in the past 10,000 years or so.
Now, recorded human history only goes back about 6,000 years or so. Anthropological history goes back much further. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for a person to surmise that true human beings are those evidenced in recorded history. Most Christians believe that humans are a composite of body and soul, and that the body may have evolved but not the soul. Many Christians believe that the human body is the result of an evolutionary process occurring over millions of years, but that at some point in time God selected a pair and infused into them a spiritual soul.
The poll answers don’t provide any possible answer reflecting that belief. A Christian might validly answer ‘yes’ to both 1) and 3) with some reservations, but the respondent is limited to only one possible unsatisfactory answer out of three, none of which may reflect his actual beliefs.
This is why polls tend to be misleading.
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irishpatrick
Guest
Why?
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exnihilo
Guest
In one sense what does what one believes about the origins of man matter? If you don’t believe in gravity that might have some negative consequences in your life. If you don’t believe that gasoline is flammable that might have some negative consequences. But your opinions about the origin of man are basically not important apart from the metphysical implications. Of course if you don’t believe in God then there are implications to how you live your life.
What really outrages people about these results is that some people refuse to believe the ‘trusted authorities’ which is the secular popular sciences. At the end of the day one’s belief about such things is just a matter of which authority you accept since the average person has no way of validating scientific claims and no one has the ability to reproduce so called scientific claims that are really historical claims. The outrage is not over science but that you will not believe the science authority. I find this amusing since these same people will generally be outraged for people believing anything from a religious authority.
What really outrages people about these results is that some people refuse to believe the ‘trusted authorities’ which is the secular popular sciences. At the end of the day one’s belief about such things is just a matter of which authority you accept since the average person has no way of validating scientific claims and no one has the ability to reproduce so called scientific claims that are really historical claims. The outrage is not over science but that you will not believe the science authority. I find this amusing since these same people will generally be outraged for people believing anything from a religious authority.
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RACJ
Guest
Is it really any wonder that the naturalist meme of microbe to man is rejected by those of us who demand proof? The idea that vision, hearing, consciousness, etc, etc evolved over time, given that we know that the vast majority of mutations are destructive to organisms, seems preposterous. I believe that people who espouse Darwinism, in many instances, are those who believe that humanity would live in harmony if only we were unshackled by guilt and God’s law. Thus they have spun a creation fairy tale which seems plausible on the surface, and leaves God out.
Sorry, I will never accept a place at the children’s table in these discussions. I know what they are all about, and it is the dismantling of civilized mores.
Rob
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aragonjohn1
Guest
Woo000t!
Shalom
Shalom
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gcharles
Guest
The Catholic statement on creation is that humans could have evolved from lower species. I feel this is a politically correct view. I also believe it borders on cowardice. How dare any man water down the gospels?
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CaseyDeAnn
Guest
How so? The Church isn’t going to dictate to us on scientific matters. That’s not her job. By leaving this open for us to decide, she is acknowledging modern science and the truth of God’s creation, which are not in opposition.
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Jeffrey
Guest
I have to agree.
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RACJ
Guest
No, they are very much in opposition, if you listen to prominent evolutionists. They are willing to humor believers, but they really believe that a god is unnecessary for creation. If anything, to them, this god is a bystander.
BTW, a church can’t dictate belief on origins to anyone. But it can and does have a position on it, but as others here have said, it borders on cowardice. No hoax has been more pernicious in undermining the faith of Church members than the theory of evolution.
Rob
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I’m not one of those who thinks humans have existed for only 6,000 years or so. Not at all.
But doesn’t it seem at least passingly strange that for millenia nobody thought to write down a single thing, or, seemingly, even to invent an alphabet or symbol-language like Chinese or heiroglyphics?
Yes, it’s asking a lot to insist on there being paper writings older than those of the Egyptians (though there are plenty of them) or even clay writings like that of Sumeria.
But nothing whatever? No 7,000 rune of any kind, anywhere?
We are assured by antropologists that “modern humans” have been around for 10,000 years at the very least. Some say quite a bit longer. And yet, those people, having every bit as much in the way of intelligence as we, never invented even the crudest symbolic writing, or if they did, never bothered to inscribe so much as “home sweet home” at the mouth of a cave?
A curiosity.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
Yes I know, and I’m half-joking anyway. But think about it. Some prehistoric shepherd is wanting to keep track of how many of his sheep he has. He has to remember it, the births and deaths, and so on. Others in his tribe also have sheep, and the same problem. His cave has soft sandstone walls. He has hard flint blades near to hand. It never occurs to him to simply take the flint and carve at least lines or pocks into the sandstone to keep track. And this guy, we are assured, is as intelligent as we are. He goes his whole life long without ever making it easy on himself by a simple expedient. His kid observes him wrestling with the numbers, but it never occurs to the kid either, his whole life long. And, generation after generation, for thousands of years, nobody thinks to do even that simple thing, let alone make some symbols standing for something like “Lions other side of mountain. Bad place.”
But then, all of a sudden, as if somebody flipped a switch, people start writing all over the place; on clay, on stone, on paper, on wood, and those writings have survived for thousands of years.
I know a person can come up with reasons why, for instance, we find lots of writing that’s 5,000 years old, but none that’s 6,000 or 7,000 or 8,000 years old. But can we really be persuaded by any of those reasons when there’s really no definitive explanation for thousand upon thousands of years when there were Hubbles and Kepplers and Einsteins aplenty, but nobody thought to write a single thing?
I’m not defending the fundamentalist notion of creationism, but one has to admit it’s curious.
But then, all of a sudden, as if somebody flipped a switch, people start writing all over the place; on clay, on stone, on paper, on wood, and those writings have survived for thousands of years.
I know a person can come up with reasons why, for instance, we find lots of writing that’s 5,000 years old, but none that’s 6,000 or 7,000 or 8,000 years old. But can we really be persuaded by any of those reasons when there’s really no definitive explanation for thousand upon thousands of years when there were Hubbles and Kepplers and Einsteins aplenty, but nobody thought to write a single thing?
I’m not defending the fundamentalist notion of creationism, but one has to admit it’s curious.
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twf
Guest
These prehistoric humans wouldn’t have had sheep…domestication of animals and farming only started within the last 10 000 years or so (as far as we can tell). For most of our species’ existence, we were nomadic tribes…hunters and gatherers. There are tribes still in the world today that live in this way…with no written language whatsoever. Are you saying that they are less intelligent? Think about it… if you were born into a small clan of hunter/gatherers, living in a very difficult world in which your sole goal was to survive day by day…would you suddenly arive at the concept of writing, agriculture, cities? It would be as alien to them as someone in the Middle Ages dreaming up a lunar colony…
Any even if the odd exceptional human did conceive of writing or some other “later development”…chances are it wouldn’t last… primitive writing on a cave wall 100 000 years ago could have eroded away or the cave could have collapsed or any one of a million other scenarios.
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