What's up with creationism?

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

How exactly do you know that the bible need not have to be taken literally? Did Jesus teleport in front of you and tell you?
Did he strip dance for you too? "Yeahhh baby shake it down, just wanna see you touch some ground shake yo body like a belly dancer .."

[Mr.wizard]

Ok, this is ridiculous The creation story is an allegory for God created everything??? So the authors wrote the creation story that's says god created everything this way, to really mean god did create everything but not this way?

Most of us believe it simply means God is the father of all creation. Whether it was done in 7 days or over the coarse of billions of years, is not important to this one, fundamental belief.

Why not just say god created everything? Why give an exact time frame and day by day breakdown of creation if it wasn't true?

[Catholic_Lady]

Most of us believe it simply means God is the father of all creation. Whether it was done in 7 days or over the coarse of billions of years, is not important to this one, fundamental belief.

Why not just say god created everything? Why give an exact time frame and day by day breakdown of creation if it wasn't true?

I don't know, you'd have to ask the people who wrote it. Perhaps just for the sake of telling a story rather than just saying "God created everything. The end." After all, that was the style of writing back then. A lot of poetry, allegory, metaphor, figurative speech, etc. Yes, the Old Testament was inspired by God but it wasn't written by God. It was written by men from thousands of years ago.

[ErGingerbreadMandude]

Well, duh! Even the notion of a God was probably metaphorical. You know, because of the style of writing back then.

Oh snap! I forgot, I forgot the part where only Christians were given the right to cherry pick in such surgical precision that God cannot be completely dismissed. My bad.

[Mr.wizard]

Why not just say god created everything? Why give an exact time frame and day by day breakdown of creation if it wasn't true?

I don't know, you'd have to ask the people who wrote it. Perhaps just for the sake of telling a story rather than just saying "God created everything. The end." After all, that was the style of writing back then. A lot of poetry, allegory, metaphor, figurative speech, etc. Yes, the Old Testament was inspired by God but it wasn't written by God. It was written by men from thousands of years ago.

Its not even a metaphor though, it is a specific account of creation, It says god did this on this day there is no metaphor involved. This approach to reading the bible is dishonest, because instead of just admitting that there are glaring errors in the bible the religions have decided just to call them metaphor.

If it was written by man thousands of years ago and your going to blame the errors on their ignorance how can you believe anything written bible?

[ApeNotKillApe]

Why not just say god created everything? Why give an exact time frame and day by day breakdown of creation if it wasn't true?

I don't know, you'd have to ask the people who wrote it. Perhaps just for the sake of telling a story rather than just saying "God created everything. The end." After all, that was the style of writing back then. A lot of poetry, allegory, metaphor, figurative speech, etc. Yes, the Old Testament was inspired by God but it wasn't written by God. It was written by men from thousands of years ago.

That seems like a pretty inefficient way to get a message across; I don't understand why an omnipotent, omnipresent being would constrain itself to the limitations of bronze age tribals.
If God wanted to communicate a message to people, why, of all the ways he could have done it, did he decide to "inspire" a handful of desert dwelling nomads in an isolated portion of the world to present his message in the form of vague parables and spread it by way of centuries of genocide, ignorance and atrocity? How many indigenous peoples were slaughtered or enslaved so that this message could get across? How many people were subjected to unspeakable torture and atrocity? How many were burned at the stake? How much violence has arisen out of disagreements over these vague texts? How much suffering have people endured simply because God couldn't think of a better way to communicate?

[Pat Mustard]

I believe in evolution. However, those who do believe in creationism also have some interesting scientific evidence to back up their claim. King posted about it once, but I forgot where.

No they don't. Everything presented by creatards as evidence for creatardism has been shown to be either deliberate lies and distortion or idiot nonsense previously falsified.

[robvalue]

I don't know, you'd have to ask the people who wrote it. Perhaps just for the sake of telling a story rather than just saying "God created everything. The end." After all, that was the style of writing back then. A lot of poetry, allegory, metaphor, figurative speech, etc. Yes, the Old Testament was inspired by God but it wasn't written by God. It was written by men from thousands of years ago.

That seems like a pretty inefficient way to get a message across; I don't understand why an omnipotent, omnipresent being would constrain itself to the limitations of bronze age tribals.
If God wanted to communicate a message to people, why, of all the ways he could have done it, did he decide to "inspire" a handful of desert dwelling nomads in an isolated portion of the world to present his message in the form of vague parables and spread it by way of centuries of genocide, ignorance and atrocity? How many indigenous peoples were slaughtered or enslaved so that this message could get across? How many people were subjected to unspeakable torture and atrocity? How many were burned at the stake? How much violence has arisen out of disagreements over these vague texts? How much suffering have people endured simply because God couldn't think of a better way to communicate?

Or he could just talk to us, right now. Why were those small groups of people in one particular time period so important? We're here, he's here so we're told, yet he watches us all argue about what the message is meant to be. It is about the single worst way I could imagine communicating a really important message, especially while you watch people kill and torture each other over it and don't step in to clarify.

[Ben Davis]

Because, you're claiming that Catholics are required to believe in the literal interpretation of the story of Genesis. Which is a 100% completely false statement. Most Catholics believe the story in Genesis is allegory/symbolism for God being behind all of creation, and for human beings to have free will and have the ability/intelligence to choose between good and evil.

Hi CL, long time, no chat.

I can empathise here because my mother raised me in her Irish Roman Catholic tradition which interprets the Genesis creation story literally: Original Sin was a real thing that Jesus had to save us from. As I grew in the faith, I was introduced to Catholic, non-literal interpretations and that opened my eyes. You see, my father had taught me about classical Greek, Roman and Nordic mythology; that their religions were a myth was never in doubt. Once I saw that the Genesis story was as much a myth as the creation of Midgard, I understood that the entirety of christianity was made up.

My question to you is, understanding (as you do) that there was never a literal Adam or Eve, Eden, Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil (and subsequent fruit), a talking serpent etc., how/why do you believe/accept that Jesus was created to save you from the Original Sin that never happened?

[Catholic_Lady]

I don't know, you'd have to ask the people who wrote it. Perhaps just for the sake of telling a story rather than just saying "God created everything. The end." After all, that was the style of writing back then. A lot of poetry, allegory, metaphor, figurative speech, etc. Yes, the Old Testament was inspired by God but it wasn't written by God. It was written by men from thousands of years ago.

That seems like a pretty inefficient way to get a message across; I don't understand why an omnipotent, omnipresent being would constrain itself to the limitations of bronze age tribals.
If God wanted to communicate a message to people, why, of all the ways he could have done it, did he decide to "inspire" a handful of desert dwelling nomads in an isolated portion of the world to present his message in the form of vague parables and spread it by way of centuries of genocide, ignorance and atrocity? How many indigenous peoples were slaughtered or enslaved so that this message could get across? How many people were subjected to unspeakable torture and atrocity? How many were burned at the stake? How much violence has arisen out of disagreements over these vague texts? How much suffering have people endured simply because God couldn't think of a better way to communicate?

The thing is, how God went about creating the world isn't important in a religious sense. The important part is that we believe, one way or another, He did. The bible isn't meant to be a science book. Also, the story of Genesis needed to be told in a way that people from 6,000 years ago would understand, and in a way that people from 6,000 years ago would write it. Do you think those people would understand anything about science/evolution/the big bang at that time? It needed to be told in a way that could reach people... the priority was getting the point across that God is the creator and that human beings have the free will to choose between good and evil. 

As for the rest of your post, I think people would have killed each other over disagreements regardless of how clearly the bible was written. People have a tendency to fight over the things that are most important to them. At one point, that was religion. Then it was land. Now it's politics (unless you're in the middle east). For the most part, humanity as a whole seems to be becoming more civilized and aren't out for blood all the time like we used to be. I'd like to think things are getting better on a whole.