Would Creationism exist, without Protestantism?

[tafan2]

Yes, but the term creationism has come to mean more than believing in God creating the universe out if nothing. The term denotes a belief in a literal interpretation of Genesis. Catholics, such as yourself, are free to believe this, but by no means required. I would venture to guess the majority of priests, bishops, and theologians of the Church do not.
As to the question hf the thread title, the belief in creationism, as defined in previous paragraph, would exist without protestantism, but would not be prominent at all.

 

[niceatheist]

I’m a Catholic and believe the world is roughly 6,00 years old, I have known protestants that believe it is 100 trillion or whatever it is claimed by scientists.

You are aware that it was George Lemaitre, a Jesuit priest, astronomer and physicist, who first posited the Big Bang. He worked through General Relativity, and found that expansion was inherent in Einstein’s work (Einstein, someone infamously, saw it too, but rather than accept it, through in the Cosmological Constant to get rid of it). Lemaitre also came up with the first estimate of the Hubble Constant, though unfortunately he published in a Belgian journal of little note to the wider community.

So my thought is that if someone like George Lemaitre not only did not have a problem with an ancient universe, but in fact was pretty much the first guy to link astronomical observation to General Relativity, reject the static universe which had pretty much reigned as the accepted model of the Universe up until that point, then I cannot imagine why any Catholic would want to assert a 6,000 year old Earth in defiance of everything we’ve known about cosmology and geology for over a century.

 

[RaisedCatholic]

Except science definitively disproves a 6,000 year old earth.

Except that it doesn’t. People have just been conditioned to believe it has.

 

[thistle]

Except that it doesn’t. People have just been conditioned to believe it has.

Nonsense. Science has proven that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. I really do not understand how anyone can be so naive as to believe in a young earth.

 

[tafan2]

I cannot imagine why any Catholic would want to assert a 6,000 year old Earth in defiance of everything we’ve known about cosmology and geology for over a century.

As a Catholic, I have to agree with this.

 

[rossum]

Nonsense. Science has proven that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. I really do not understand how anyone can be so naive as to believe in a young earth.

My view is that because Protestantism broke away from the Catholic Church before Galileo’s trial that Protestantism did not learn the lesson of that trial: In questions of the material universe, science will always win.

Not having learned that lesson, as the Catholic Church did, some Protestant denominations decided that they would use their interpretation of Scripture instead of science to study the material universe. Very slowly, those denominations are learning the lesson that the Catholic Church has already learned.

 

[BigRon]

I cannot imagine why any Catholic would want to assert a 6,000 year old Earth in defiance of everything we’ve known about cosmology and geology for over a century.

If you count backwards you get to Adam roughly 6000 years ago. Before that God created the world in six days. Job done. It makes no sense for God to take 200 quadrillion years to create something he can create in one second if He wanted to.

 

[TULIPed]

Perhaps it makes sense to have a look at what the Bible has to say about faith. From Hebrews 11:

“ Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. 2 Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

Christians believe that a man was born of a virgin - not by science, but by faith. We believe that a man was raised again from the dead after 3 days - not by science, but by faith. We believe that miracles - events that happen in spite of what we perceive as normal in a world defined by science - happen. Indeed, the words Jesus used to comfort John the Baptist while he worried in prison were these:

“ 22 And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought to them.”

Science and scientists are gifts from God. They help us understand and master the world He gave us. But as Christians, it is our faith that defines us.

So the question is this - at what point in the Bible do we stop - or start - believing in miracles? Or perhaps a better one - at what point do we accuse fellow Christians of being “blind to science” because they choose to believe in the miracle of a world younger that what we perceive?

I personally am pretty sure the earth is a fair bit (millions of years) older than 6,000 years old. When Gabriel blows his horn though, if the Good Lord looks me in the eye and asks me what I’d bet on it, I think I’d be willing to risk my 1941 wheat penny (and maybe my lucky rabbits foot )

 

[rossum]

It makes no sense for God to take 200 quadrillion years to create something he can create in one second if He wanted to.

It makes no sense for God to take 144 hours to create something He can create in one femtosecond if He wanted to.

 

[tafan2]

This shows a lack of understanding of God. While I can somewhat understand the argument based on a literal interpretion of the bible, (though I disagree with it for several rrasons), various forms of arguments based on unneeded time suggests that God is not eternal. There is no difference to God between 15 billion years and 1 second. If one is arguing for a young earth on these grounds, on does not have a Catholic understanding of God. Their God is too weak.

 

[Wannano]

RaisedCatholic:

Except that it doesn’t. People have just been conditioned to believe it has.

Nonsense. Science has proven that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. I really do not understand how anyone can be so naive as to believe in a young earth.

Has science been able to prove that a consecrated host is Jesus? For me, it is just as easy to believe that God could make our world in an instant with billion year old characteristics as to believe in Transubstantiation. To believe in either theory requires the same faith, belief, submission?

 

[lanman87]

Nonsense. Science has proven that the Earth is around 4.5 billion years old. I really do not understand how anyone can be so naive as to believe in a young earth.

Science has proven the earth appears to be 4.5 Billion years old.

Think of it this way. If God created a mature tree out of nothing and when you cut it down you see 40 rings you would assume the tree is 40 years old. Maybe, just maybe, that is what God did with the entire cosmos. He created a mature earth and universe 6000 years ago. But when we “look at the rings” we see a 4.5 billion year old earth.

 

[tafan2]

Not IMO. With regards to the Eucharist, we can, to some extent, understand and explain why God has given us this miracle.
Why would He have created a universe 6000 years ago with a 15 billion year history built into it?
Also, the history He would have built into it, along with the structure itself contradicts the literal sense if Genesis. This further confuses us and again raises the question as to why? In addition, God is eternal and all powerful. He created the universe with all of it’s time being present to Him. Which again raises the question why?

So I think your analogy is weak.

 

[lanman87]

Why would He have created a universe 6000 years ago with a 15 billion year history built into it?

Any answer to that is speculation, but the simplest answer is because it was the best way to have a place for mankind to dwell.

 

[TULIPed]

Not IMO. With regards to the Eucharist, we can, to some extent, understand and explain why God has given us this miracle.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

 

[thistle]

Science has proven the earth appears to be 4.5 Billion years old.

Think of it this way. If God created a mature tree out of nothing and when you cut it down you see 40 rings you would assume the tree is 40 years old. Maybe, just maybe, that is what God did with the entire cosmos. He created a mature earth and universe 6000 years ago. But when we “look at the rings” we see a 4.5 billion year old earth.

That would mean God deceived us and we know that is not possible!

 

[TULIPed]

Then are not all miracles a deception? Miracles - and mysteries for that matter - are things that happen in spite of what we see and are able to discern otherwise.

 

[GKMotley]

Omphalos hypothesis

 

[tafan2]

No, that’s not a possible answer. It was just as easy for Him to create it 15 billion years ago. And the end result is the same, why is one version if two identical universes better?

 

[lanman87]

That would mean God deceived us and we know that is not possible!

Why does that mean God deceived us? All the creation story says is that God created the Heavens and the Earth and that he created fish and stars and livestock and so forth.

If God creates a 40 year old tree, or a 40 year old man and says I created a tree and I created a man, we are not being lied to.