Is the denial of geologic evidence the best way to promote Christianity?

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Tim TP

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I find that the God squad converters in the town centre who try to gather new recruits to Christianity have a basis of denying as much of science as possible.

Is this a good way to promote the faith by denying obvious facts or will it cause faith to be regarded as just plain silly?
 

Dodo_David

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When it comes to a perceived conflict between science and the Bible, it is best to heed the warning of Augustine, the 5th-century Bishop of Hippo. He said the following:

"Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of the world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones and so forth, and this knowledge he holds as to being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.

If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason?

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion [1 Tim. 1:7]."

Quote Source: Mark Knoll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Inter-Varsity Press: 1995), pp.202-203.
 

Arnie Manitoba

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Tim TP said:
I find that the God squad converters in the town centre who try to gather new recruits to Christianity have a basis of denying as much of science as possible.

Is this a good way to promote the faith by denying obvious facts or will it cause faith to be regarded as just plain silly?
You are correct that creationists make a mess when they try to define science their way.

But they didn't start it .... some secular geologists did ... they have a belief system that says everything is billions of years old but they have no way of proving it.

Yet they call it "scientific fact" ... and that is where the problems begin.
We say a Creator made the whole universe and everything in it

The evolutionist says everything made itself out of nothing and by random chance.
 

Tim TP

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Dodo David,

Yep, that's what I think.

I'm kind of positive about it as it will surely destroy the Christian religion but against the fact that it will continue to do damage in the process.

Arnie Manitoba said:
You are correct that creationists make a mess when they try to define science their way.

But they didn't start it .... some secular geologists did ... they have a belief system that says everything is billions of years old but they have no way of proving it.

Yet they call it "scientific fact" ... and that is where the problems begin.

We say a Creator made the whole universe and everything in it

The evolutionist says everything made itself out of nothing and by random chance.
The idea that the world is billions of years old was arrived at by geologists who started with creationist ideas.

I was walking near my house when I passed an area of exposed rock. Sheffield is hilly and small cliffs are common.

The exposed samdstone had been laid down by many sucessive deposition events. It showed evidence of these events being anual or having longer intervals between the small layers. The layers were of differering thicknesses and had a slightly different maximum size of sand grain in them.

I have done basic geography, to A level. This stone is utterly clear evidence that the sea or lake it was formed in had sucessive flood events which deposited sediments over many centuaries of milenium.

Today the exposed stone is near the top of a hill. It is very far from the sea.

Some processes have shifted it from a sea or lake bed and lifted it high.

All this takes many millions of years. It shows direct irrifutable evidence of these long time periods.

Denying these things make you look stupid and an obvious liar.

The scientists have evidence for what they say.
 

Tim TP

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Yep, rock can bend without cracking if it's under enough pressure. It's the kind of thing that is examined in university labs.

Have a closer look at photo 2. It shows a lot of layers of rock which have been folded and bent in the lower part of the cliff.

These layers are of a sand stone (I think) which has been laid down one layer at a time. Each layer is the result of a deposition event. Say something like the annual monsoon floods which carry sediment out of India and deposit them in the Bay of Bengal.

The layers above this folded zone are flat. These have been laid down in a similar fashion.

Both of these parts of the cliff took lots of time to accumulate. The process had an interuption which erroded the top off the lower sediments after they were deposited and then folded. It cannot be the result of all the rock being there when the folding took place.

This cannot be the result of a single event. There is just too much detail. Unless you are saying that God has faked the rocks then the photos are 100% evidence for an old earth.
 

Dodo_David

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Tim TP, I want to assure you that the findings of science aren't necessarily incompatible with the Christian faith.

The Christian faith doesn't require scientific discoveries and theories to pass a religious litmus test.
 
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Arnie Manitoba

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What about the places where there are "millions" of years of rock layers with the fossil of a 60' whale standing on its tail ??

Or a 40' tree vertical in the rock layers.

Why do the secular geologist hide those things.

Is it because it ruins their pet theory ??

And you think creationists are silly ??
 

Tim TP

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Dodo_David said:
Tim TP, I want to assure you that the findings of science aren't necessarily incompatible with the Christian faith.

The Christian faith doesn't require scientific discoveries and theories to pass a religious litmus test.
Arnie Manitoba seems to think it is.
Arnie Manitoba said:
What about the places where there are "millions" of years of rock layers with the fossil of a 60' whale standing on its tail ??

Or a 40' tree vertical in the rock layers.

Why do the secular geologist hide those things.

Is it because it ruins their pet theory ??

And you think creationists are silly ??
OK, so you post a link to photos which you claim show evidence of a young earth creation. I then explain that they show exactly the opposite and you then refer to things which I cannot have a look at.

Let's see this evidence which is incompatable with the normal ideas of geology then.
 

Theophane

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Dodo_David said:
Tim TP, I want to assure you that the findings of science aren't necessarily incompatible with the Christian faith.

The Christian faith doesn't require scientific discoveries and theories to pass a religious litmus test.
Nor should it! Our faith has nothing to do with the findings of science. It isn't science and it should not try to *be* science.
 

Tim TP

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Theophane said:
Nor should it! Our faith has nothing to do with the findings of science. It isn't science and it should not try to *be* science.
Then why is it that so many Christians deny the bleeding obvious that the Bible is factually incorrect in many instances?
 

Dan57

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Tim TP said:
OK, so you post a link to photos which you claim show evidence of a young earth creation. I then explain that they show exactly the opposite and you then refer to things which I cannot have a look at.
The bible does not claim a young earth.. Genesis 1:2 "And the earth was without form and void". Was is the wrong English word here, the Hebrew word used for "was" is "hayah" (Strong's ref #1961). Hayah means; to become or came to pass. So verse two should correctly read that 'The earth became void and without form'. Millions of years could have passed between verses one and 2 of Genesis.
 
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Tim TP

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Dan57,

Is the earth billions of years old with the clear evidence of the processes of life and whatnot being left in the ground by way of fossils and all the rest or is it a few thousand years old and all that evidence is just put there by God to confuse us?

Arni,

It's not just Finches. The stone which is my front door step is made of the local rock from the Rivelin valley. It has the clear layering of a sandstone deposited in a lake sea or swamp over many years and has then had time to harden into rock under the pressure of more rock above it. I cannot step over it without seeing the bleeding obvious that Genisis is wrong.
 

Theophane

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For what it's worth, I do not believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old. The age of the Earth does not interest me. YEC or OEC, at the end of the day what difference does it make in our lives?
 

Tim TP

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The difference is that if the Bible is seen as the source of knowlege or of ethics then stupid evil things happen.

Today the power of the Church is very little but today it is still enough to create situations in Ireland where a woman died due to the doctors not being able to abort the dying baby she was carrieing thus both of them died rather than just one.

The influence of stupid theocratic teaching and thinking is stifling biological research into such marvelous avenues of medicine as stem cell research especially but not only in America. That is evil.

If the real world is seen as more true than the Bible then such things don't happen.
 

Dan57

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Tim TP said:
Dan57,

Is the earth billions of years old with the clear evidence of the processes of life and whatnot being left in the ground by way of fossils and all the rest or is it a few thousand years old and all that evidence is just put there by God to confuse us?
The bible doesn't give an exact date of the earth, however, I think its safe to assume that its at least millions of years old. I believe an earth age existed prior to the creation in Genesis 1:2... http://www.biblestudysite.com/begin.htm
 

Theophane

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Tim TP said:
The difference is that if the Bible is seen as the source of knowlege or of ethics then stupid evil things happen.

Today the power of the Church is very little but today it is still enough to create situations in Ireland where a woman died due to the doctors not being able to abort the dying baby she was carrieing thus both of them died rather than just one.

The influence of stupid theocratic teaching and thinking is stifling biological research into such marvelous avenues of medicine as stem cell research especially but not only in America. That is evil.

If the real world is seen as more true than the Bible then such things don't happen.
Is there a way to harvest stem-cells from a fetus without killing it?
 

horsecamp

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Theophane said:
For what it's worth, I do not believe the Earth is only 6,000 years old. The age of the Earth does not interest me. YEC or OEC, at the end of the day what difference does it make in our lives?

a big difference .. for many families for instance what a person believes about this in some families dictates .. who leads a family prayer and who shall not who is allowed to lead a bible study and who shall not.. who a daughter is allowed to date and who she is not who is concidered a enemy of the christian faith and who is not .

so as you see not all christians except your dismissal as if its no big deal at all..


www.lutheranscience.org
 
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