The Glade 4.0

I taught my kids to ride a bike, and at a certain point after taking the training wheels off, I let go of the bike and let them go on their own. I knew they were going to fall, and sure enough, they did. I helped them up and let them go again, and again they fell.

Riding a bike pretty much means you're gunna fall. I didn't try to influence them to not ride, I let them decide for themselves.

It's not easy ... knowing your kid is going to fall but still letting them fall, but it's the right thing to do.

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In time, this too shall pass.

The real issue with taking Genesis literally is not the creation story itself, as God could have created the universe in any state.

The real issue is that it's basically impossible for the world to have progressed from having only two people on it to its current state in less than 10,000 years. This is especially true when you consider that at some intervening point, when humanity had already proliferated to the point that civilization existed, nearly all life was destroyed by the flood.

For this to work, God would have to interfere with the world's development to the point where it's nearly impossible to wrap your brain around it. The basic laws of physics would have had to be altered to the point where life as we know it is not possible, but since life continued, God would have somehow had to change them but not change them in truly mind-boggling ways. Where did all the extra people come from? How did they spread as far as they did so quickly? Why did no one remember the massively-accelerated population growth or spread and write this stuff down? Did God just force everyone to not notice or destroy all the evidence?

This results in a situation where God has, for some reason, created a situation where it's possible to deduce from the Scriptures that the world is less than 10,000 years old, (this isn't explicitly stated, you have to study it and figure it out for yourself) yet all evidence of the 10,000 year old Earth other than that contained in the Scriptures has been eliminated. Even if you assume God wants you to look to Scripture to find the answers, why is the process by which the earth was advanced from two people to the state it was at Jesus' birth not commented on at all? The creation of the universe deserves a detailed explanation, but that doesn't deserve even a single passage? It makes absolutely no sense.

Those things are all problems only if you accept the idea that God created the world 10,000 years ago but then turn arounds and try to pick apart the events since as if there were actually any reason God couldn't make all those things happen too.

All of it makes sense just fine if you start with a literal Genesis.

The real problem is that the beginning of Genesis is not intended as a detailed account. It's all just to set up Abraham coming on the scene. They're called Abrhamic religions for a reason.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

A wizard did it!

I love the, "it makes sense if you don't try to make sense of it" responses.

Yes, exactly. Rephrasing it as "a wizard" and saying it in a presumably sarcastic tone do not make a counterargument.



FIFY

Again, if you start with the assumption that the first chapters of Genesis are literal descriptions of the creation of the world, it makes no sense to then proceed from there as if every other problem that would create couldn't also be solved by God. That isn't "trying to make sense of it"; it's a stolen concept fallacy where the idea of literal Creationism is accepted in getting the world, Adam, and Eve created but then rejected as soon as it conveniently creates other problems God has to solve. The flimsy justification of "Well, it isn't commented on and that doesn't make sense" doesn't help. That's entirely subjective. God comments on what He wishes to comment on. Trying to impose the perspective of a human on God (a human who doesn't believe in God in the first place, no less) is what doesn't make sense.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't believe because it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense because I don't believe.

These are two very different statements.

FWIW, its the first one for me.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Those two sentences are, for all intents and purposes, identical. They are not different. You are making fundamental assumptions that cause it to "not make sense" to you. Those are different from the fundamental assumptions (otherwise known as "faith") to believers.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Its a circular argument.

It just depends on the starting point.

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Holy shitsnacks!

It is a circular argument to claim you don't believe because it doesn't make sense without acknowledging that is because you make assumptions in terms of which it doesn't make sense.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It doesn't make rational sense in terms of reality. Therefore, I don't believe in it.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Yes but he's asking you to take the viewpoint of a literal Genesis believer. In that case, your faith would reconcile your need for understanding everything, and you'd be able to just say, "God did it." He's not asking YOU to make sense of it. He's saying that if you believed in Genesis literally, it wouldn't be hard to do.

It doesn't make rational sense in terms of reality if you assume that the observable universe is the extent of reality, but we're positing a God who could with no meaningful effort address all those problems. It makes sense in terms of its own assumptions, one of which is that God can create a universe in any way He wants, which would include one with all the evidence necessary to appear to have originated by completely different means.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is my "god is an *******" option, from earlier in the thread.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

In which case God is an "*******" only in your personal, subjective judgement.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Yes. It is my personal, subjective judgement that any Deity that would intentionally design the universe to appear to be 14 billion years old, make it appear that life on earth is the result of the evolution of all species from an original single-celled species over the last four billion years, hide any and all empirical evidence of His existence from any and all observers, and then require people to somehow realize it's all a divine practical joke and come to the entirely illogical and unsupported conclusion that the universe and all species in it was created discretely 6,0000 years ago by a Deity -- or else they burn for eternity -- that would make Him an *******. YMMV.

There are plenty of ways to believe in God that do not require ignoring any and all reason. Some only require ignoring tiny bits of reason, and everybody does that at least a little.

I do find it interesting, in this poll, btw, that none of the literal young earth creationists here selected that option.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Just so we're clear that it's your personal, subjective opinion. I don't buy the "it looks 14 billion years old but its really brand new" idea, but believing that has nothing to do with abandonment of all reason. Again, its a matter of starting assumptions.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You could not possibly be anymore wrong.

The word "because" is a logical operator in both sentences, but the subordination is COMPLETELY different.

If ever anyone on these forums has been ABSOLUTELY wrong, this is it.

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You know why math is hard?

Most people can't understand the difference between if and iff.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Ugh, I've been out of the game too long. It actually took me a bit to remember what that stood for.

I believe...I'll have another drink and celebrate the Giant's win over the Cards tonight!

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

Are you saying their win was an act of God?

/tease

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Holy shitsnacks!

If God is kind and merciful then their victory over the Tigers is an act.

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