Would Creationism exist, without Protestantism?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jovian90
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
tafan2 said:
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?
Click to expand...
Like I said, it is all speculation. I would speculate that maybe he didn’t want to wait 15 billion years to bring mankind into the world so he just created a mature and stable earth and universe quickly.
 
Wannano said:
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?
Click to expand...
I don’t think so. I think that it is one thing to have faith in the clearly supernatural - events that we are asked to take on faith as occurring outside the natural order. It is another to believe that the natural is not what it appears to be - that there is no natural order.
 
But God does NOT wait!!! Why such a limited view of God? I realize that is just speculation on your part, but let’s not speculate by reducing God.
 
If God created a 40-year-old tree to make us believe it was 40 years old, wouldn’t it be the sensible thing to indeed believe it was 40 years old?
 
PickyPicky said:
If God created a 40-year-old tree to make us believe it was 40 years old, wouldn’t it be the sensible thing to indeed believe it was 40 years old?
Click to expand...
Unless God pointed at the tree and said I created it 10 years ago. Then it would be sensible to think God created a 40 year old tree 10 years ago.
 
The Magisterium doesn’t do science.
The Magisterium guides the faithful in properly appreciating the role of science in relation to faith.
The Magisterium guides the faithful in the proper relation of nature to grace.
The Magisterium is concerned that the faithful be whole people, not just people of the book, not just fideists, but well integrated, observant, docile, faithful people.

The faithful are given freedom to believe as their conscience guides them. But the faithful are not free to wallow in ignorance. That is not freedom.
We don’t have a license to ignorance of science or faith.
 
Last edited:
This is a key point. Forget about evolution for a second and just consider what we know about geology, cosmology, physics, and biology ( excluding evolution). One cannot reconcile this knowledge about out physical world with the story of creation in Genesis. So how can the YEC theory be justified on the grounds that God made it to look like it had a 15 billion year old history? That view of things leaves us exactly with the same delima: do we interpret Genesis as literal history or not?
 
God can do whatever God wants, in whatever way God wills it. God can, or has the potency to do anything.

But the fact that God can do anything does not mean it’s in God’s nature to do it. For instance, God could deprive humanity of free will, thereby eliminating suffering, but it’s not in his revealed nature to do so.

Likewise, God also reveals his nature through his creation, and reason/ science observe God’s creation seeking to understand God through it. And so science/reason cannot be disregarded in favor of a fideistic view of the bible.
 
Last edited:
BigRon said:
40.png
niceatheist:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
You’ll have to take that up with God. We’ve known since the 18th century that the world is far older than 6,000 years, and we’ve known since the early twentieth century that the Universe is billions of years old. To assert otherwise is to invoke a version of God that I don’t think is compatible with any form of Christianity; a trickster God that makes a young world with the appearances of age.

I’m sorry. The science just doesn’t agree with a Sola Scriptura account of Creation.
 
BigRon said:
40.png
niceatheist:
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.
Click to expand...
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.
Click to expand...
God is not just another actor in time. You and I would have to make a decision about when to create the universe… do it now or wait til later…We decide, then we act,all in time.

These human processes do not remotely apply to God, who is unconditioned by time or change. God sees everything at once, he does not wait for this and that. Scripture passages that speak of this are simply human expressions of inexpressible things.
 
Last edited:
GKMotley said:
Omphalos hypothesis
Click to expand...
Theodosius Dobzhansky, a Russian Orthodox biologist has a good point to make here:
One of the early antievolutionists, P. H. Gosse, published a book entitled Omphalos (“the Navel”). The gist of this amazing book is that Adam, though he had no mother, was created with a navel, and that fossils were placed by the Creator where we find them now - a deliberate act on His part, to give the appearance of great antiquity and geologic upheaveals. It is easy to see the fatal flaw in all such notions. They are blasphemies, accusing God of absurd deceitfulness. This is as revolting as it is uncalled for.

– Source: Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution.
Click to expand...
 
goout said:
But the faithful are not free to wallow in ignorance.
Click to expand...
Is the implication that those Christians who believe in a “young earth” are ignorant? I think Bill Maher would find this amusing - in a sort of “tallest midget at the circus” way.
 
tafan2 said:
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.
Click to expand...
Why is “why” the only rebuttal we can dream up when we are weak in our own reasoning ? :roll_eyes:
 
TULIPed said:
40.png
goout:
But the faithful are not free to wallow in ignorance.
Click to expand...
Is the implication that those Christians who believe in a “young earth” are ignorant? I think Bill Maher would find this amusing - in a sort of “tallest midget at the circus” way.
Click to expand...
Yes.
These kinds of skewed misrepresentations of Christianity are what give people like Bill Maher reason to get up in the morning. And atheists, generally speaking.

Having faith, and having reverence for scripture…these do not excuse ignorance of basic settled science.
That very ignorance causes scandal for others who might be considering Christianity.
 
Last edited:
I’m pretty sure virgin birth and an empty tomb fly in the face of most “settled science”.
 
TULIPed said:
I’m pretty sure virgin birth and an empty tomb fly in the face of most “settled science”.
Click to expand...
Well, science has no way to investigate those specific and unique claims of Scripture and the Church, right? They go against the standard behavior of nature for sure. Can we expect God to allow the scientific method to be applied to those unique events? God could allow that discovery, right? If God willed it. Some people assign a materialist scientific value to the Shroud along these lines.

In the case of the development and age of the earth, well established and well-settled scientific research, observation, and documentation has revealed much. God apparently has willed to allow specific scientific documentation of these matters.

How can I excuse myself from accepting common sense revelation?
How far can I go in ignoring the world around me. God heals people in scripture without benefit of medicine or doctors.
Am I justified in ignoring basic scientific medical advancements when my children are sick, because Scripture seems to contradict medical science?
I am certainly free to do so, but that would be an abuse of my freedom.
 
Last edited:
goout said:
Well, science has no way to investigate those specific and unique claims of Scripture and the Church, right?
Click to expand...
I would argue that it’s not that science has no way to investigate the claims, rather it doesn’t bother. It’s patently obvious that nobody (zombies excerpted of course, and perhaps other members of the undead, like vampires, although we could argue whether or not they actually died - but I digress) rises from the dead. Likewise, nobody is born from a virgin - ever. And yet - we peculiar people - choose to believe it. Why?

Because the Bible (and other Christians that we respect, like the Magisterium) tell us so. So it’s simple - all of us, have a point at which we start taking events in the Bible literally. I believe that a man, literally born of a virgin, died and literally rose again. I believe this in spite of everything else in the world that tells me it’s impossible. And I believe it because I believe what the Bible tells me is truth.

Some of my Christian brothers and sisters believe that the world was literally created in 7 days, around 6,000 years ago. The believe it because they believe what the Bible tells them. I disagree with them. But I’m not going to call them ignorant for their beliefs, no more than I would call a Catholic ignorant for theirs. To do so would be…un-Christian.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top