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Does anyone else find creationism insulting to God?

Roger&Me

Roger&Me

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First of all, I'm not particularly religious by any means, and do not subscribe to the beliefs of any particular organized religion. However, I am a very scientificly-minded person and I do believe in a theory called Occam's Razor:

One should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

This is basically stating that the simplest explaination for anything tends to be the correct one. Now, to me, it's easier to just accept the fact that a higher-being created everything. However, I think it's very insulting to say that he just kind of POOF! made everything arbitrarily like creationism suggests.

The more and more I learn about mathematics and science, I come to realize more and more that everything in the world is inter-related mathematically in some way. Everything is a funtion of something else. Every action or entity in the world is complexly interrelated and can be expressed using a variant of "f(x) =" notation. When we live in this complex of a world, especially when you look at higher maths such as quantum physics and realize that even quantum physics can be related to einstein's physics by the center of the black hole, you come to realize that even two opposites are completely interrelated.

If we can assume for a moment, just for hypothetical purposes, that God really does exist without a doubt: why would he make the world so incredibly complicated, and perfectly interrelated only to turn around and just POOF! create life. I think that's hideously insulting to think he would lack that much subtlety. Isn't it safer to assume, even if you do believe in God, that evolution is a more "faithful" and "holy" side to take, because it demonstrates how ingenious and all-powerful God really is? That when the weak die off and are unable to reproduce, the only animals reproducing are the stronger, more likely to survive ones, hence improving our bloodlines into the actualized species that we are today? I just find it very insulting to any higher being that might exist to say that he just kind of made us without any kind of method behind it, and it also seems just plain illogical, seeing as everything in the world is interrelated to such a great degree, that when the rest of the proverbial "graph of the world" is asymptoting, we would be the point-of-discontinuity. Like Einstein said "I study physics to know the mind of God."

I hope this made at least a little sense, I'm not in a very sober state right now, but I just felt that this was slightly profound and though I should throw it out there.

I also just want to say that I hope I haven't offended any atheists out there, as I was once for a while also, I don't want this to turn into a discussion about whether or not God exists; but rather, if you just for hypothetical purposes assume that he does, a discussion about an alternative view of denouncing creationism. The Evolution vs. Creationism debate is usually an unofficial Christians vs. Atheists debate, and I want to turn it not into a religious discussion, but a scientific one.
 
I also apologize for referring to God as "he" (it was unintentional), not only is it sexist, but in all likelyhood, a greater being probably wouldn't have a human gender.
 
i agree, but i really feel that creation/evolution "problem of evil" type arguments (and religion in general) are really missing the point of what god is about, and who he is. read my last post in the demonology thread, and if you'd like i'll try to explain more.

In relation to your problem with creation - you have taken the standpoint that the bible is literal, and it is not necessarily so. I believe it was explained that way at the time to make it easier for those people to understand - they simply could not comprehend time scales like 4.5 billion years or quantom theory etc. - not due to stupidity or anything, but mainly to technological advancement. Think how little 1000 miles is when you've got a plane compared to a camel. Or when you have documental evidence of the past 1500 or so years.
Everything is relative.:D
 
You're making a good point. I'm a pantheist of a kind, and I find divinity and systems thinking (naturally including biological evolution) to be concordant with my spirituality. So in a nutshell, my view would be that God created (or rather, IS) the evolving world. As for the creationist myster of why we are here, it's quite simple because if we weren't, there would be nobody and the thought would not have been ever made..
http://www.anthropic-principle.com/primer.html
 
Really good thread. I have thought about this a lot especially when this was a hot debate here in the US. What I think is really simple to consider is that what's written in the bible is metaphoric. People who truly believe that the world was created in seven days must be so pent up in their beliefs that they can't even see what's real. I'm not a super religious person, but I do go to church occasionally (usually monthly). What I have always believed is that when the bible says one day, it really means like a million years or something. Sure he could do it in one day, but that's not the way he made the world work. And anyway, back when the bible was written who would have any idea what a millions years is? Obviously a day made him sound much more powerful. At least we don't have to argue about the order of creation.
 
I think pretty much the exact same thing you do. I'm not particularly religious - I guess I'm best described as an agnostic, although that's not quite perfect - but I feel the Christians do a great injustice to their God. They turn Him into a one-dimensional character little better than a magician in a children's book. I see no reason why God could not have started evolution - I mean shit, we've got no real scientific data or even evidence that explains how the first cell got created - maybe it was God that set down the first one-celled organism. That, to me, seems perfectly logical - far more so than God creating fourteen different species of finches that are nearly identical on the Galapagos islands for no good reason and sticking dinosaur bones under the ground to "test our faith" 8)
 
Roger&me - There actually is a reason why God is reffered to as He. At least in Judaism.

This is to create the image that God is fatherlike and loving, and that fathers can be loving and caring as well, just like moms. The Old Testament also has rules carefully worded to respect women. But, of course, men have abused these rules, or just misread them completely, and women have suffered.
 
I think it's funny how God seems so much like a human in the bible. I mean, we were created in his image. God is said to have human emotions, he gets mad at people, gets revenge. He desires for things, he is satisfied when he creates something. I agree with you that the depiction of God in the bible is degrading. I would think that the supreme being would have risen above our petty human emotions. But thats just me.
Instead of saying that creation had to be dumbed down to fit peoples' world view at the time, wouldn;t it seem more logical that the people who wrote the bible had no clue what they were talking about? I mean, scales like 1000 miles were used because that's all they knew, not because god didn;t think they would understand. I think it's too convenient to make up excuses after the fact. I mean, they only had recorded history 1500 years back, so that's when they assumed the Earth was created. Evidence comes along later to the contrary and suddenly the bible is a big metaphor.
Like Kitty said, I also don;t understand why strictly religous people claim that evolution never happened and concoct wild stories so that the scientific data will make sense. Evolution is an amazing process, a miracle if you will. Why would believers in God denounce what could possibly be his greatest achievement? I mean we know that evolution happens, its built into how our DNA funtions. God supposedly designed that DNA, so evolution should be hailed as God's greatest masterpiece. But since it wasn;t written down in some book, people can't see whats 2 inches in front of their face.
I could go on and on, but the night is starting and I'm anxious to get out. This is basically why I am an agnostic, I'm not going to completely rule out that there is no creator, but I'm certainly not going to worship any of the twisted ideas that people these days call "God." And I'm not going to endorse any religion that has caused and continues to cause many of the problems on this planet.
 
I don't find cretinism insulting to G_d so much as I find it insulting to anyone with a three digit IQ. Quite frankly I worry that not only are there people in this country who lack the requisite education to differentiate between philosophy/religion/faith and science, but that these people are legally allowed to vote, and appear to do so fairly regularly, especially in Kansas.
 
Lol who would be insulted? It is a rational discussion and you do have a point and I completely understand where you are coming from.

OH and im not an athiest. Im a baptized Roman Catholic. Altho i am most definitely far from being a saint and am by NO MEANS overzealously pious , I am still quite a religious person (yeah believe it b*tches ;)) Unlike many other people (and there are LOTS!) who view being a Catholic as disdainful or embarassing or whatever, I have always found myself able to rise above the infernal racket of endless religious debate. I have never viewed attacks on God or Catholicism as personal affronts simply because I couldnt care less what other people think of me by virtue of my religion . That aint my problem no more homie! And i am at peace . AMEN !!!

oh yeah back on topic ...

The Christian view that all intercourse outside marriage is immoral was, as we see in the above passages from St. Paul, based upon the view that all sexual intercourse, even within marriage, is regrettable. A view of this sort, which goes against biological facts, can only be regarded by sane people as a morbid aberration. The fact that it is embedded in Christian ethics has made Christianity throughout its whole history a force tending towards mental disorders and unwholesome views of life.
Bertrand Russell

ERGO....

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
~ Galileo Galilei

Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
~ Thomas Jefferson


Deduce from that what you will.
 
Great thread.

1.) I've never considered evolution and God to be mutually exclusive. Honestly, in my limited experience most Creationists are offended by the idea of man being descended from "monkeys" and other "lower life" rather than the whole gamut of evolution itself; keep in mind that the Bible places man in a very special position on Earth, and evolution seems to remove him from that special place.

2.) I respect an internally consistent God who works through evolution and geologic time more than an inconsistent one that creates the world in six days but creates all this evidence to the contrary--or hell, what *seems* like evidence to the contary. Trying to wrap my head around Creationist logic always makes me feel like my cortex is going to spontaneously combust.
 
God the POOFTEER!

"Poofing" his way through manifesting a universe, in between temper tantrums.

:D :D :D


Every time I encounter someone who views the notion of God in such simple terms, I immediately conclude that they suffer from some form of childhood trauma and are emotionally stuck in some kind of child/parent conflict. It's also interesting to note that this same personality type is often caught up in the punishment of others (even if the issue has no effect on them personally). The "God is gonna getcha!" mentality.

Stepping back a bit, these people often create an environment for their own children where they are in a constant state of emotional conflict. And one which would befit the development of anal retentative tendencies.

This isn't just limited to fundimentalist christians, either. The childhood environmental conflict is quite similar in fundimentalist Muslim families.

And the expression of rage and attempts at self justification, expressed as self-rightousness, are passed down from one generation to the next generation.


So fundies are a bunch of sick, twisted individuals who emotionally abuse their children with a sustained sense of conflict.

A fine, long standing tradition, of mental disorders. And these are the people who would like to run the world, spreading the "Good News." 8(



EDIT: I never answered the question. 8)

I don't feel that it is possible to insult God. In my view, God is everything and is all of existance known and unknowable. We we literary live inside the body of God.


.
 
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i'll never claim that i understand everything about God or why He made the world and everything in it, but i don't believe that just cos weak animals die off and strong animals are left to procreate indicates that God isn't all powerful or has no method behind what he does.
i dont see the insult in creation at all.
*shrug*
it takes faith to believe evolution and it takes faith to believe creation. it's just a matter of where you put your faith. it's a spiritual thing ;)
 
It takes about as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in gravity. Now, as someone who has spent time on a 50-foot high catwalk narrower than a sidewalk, leaning over the edge with 25-pound wrought-iron stage weights while people are standing underneath, trust me, it doesn't take much faith to believe in gravity.

I still don't get why people are so adamant that we didn't descend from apes (actually, they always seem to use the term "monkeys," which is false, nobody has argued that humans evolved from monkeys). Anyone who has ever been to an NFL game and seen topless guys with paint on their beer-bellies yelling and screaming and throwing things cannot possibly doubt that we evolved from apes, although I suppose it does make one doubt that it was a step up.
 
Roger&Me said:
This is basically stating that the simplest explaination for anything tends to be the correct one. Now, to me, it's easier to just accept the fact that a higher-being created everything. However, I think it's very insulting to say that he just kind of POOF! made everything arbitrarily like creationism suggests.
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Definitely. What baffles & saddens me is how small and, well, empty a worldview creationism is. When you start to learn evolutionary biology it's just astonishing how many amazing, interesting things there are to understand, how much clever stuff there is in the world that you hadn't even imagined. I mean, there are times when you pause and think about something and you're filled with a sense of awe and wonder and beauty. You look at the sequence variants of some DNA and realize you're looking at a book of events that's millions upon millions of years old... or you're looking at a hominid skeleton and realize that this was a real woman once, with cares and thoughts and loved ones, and you wonder what she was like and what she would think of the humans her descendants have become. To shut your eyes to all of this in order to cling to a simple story where everything was just magically conjured into existence, period, end of story.... it's sad.
Honestly, in my limited experience most Creationists are offended by the idea of man being descended from "monkeys" and other "lower life" rather than the whole gamut of evolution itself; keep in mind that the Bible places man in a very special position on Earth, and evolution seems to remove him from that special place.
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Indeed. In my experience, they're sometimes also afraid that evolution makes God less 'necessary,' by naturally explaining something which used to be the province of divine/supernatural explanations. Some, not all, creationists want to maintain a simplistic, naive, & shallowly literalist interpretation of the Bible; and of course evolution is incompatible with that.

Most commonly, though, people just don't seem to understand anything about what evolution/common descent actually says; and instead they think it says all sorts of bizarre things that it acutally doesn't. Just look at cxsx's post above. He seems to believe that evolution means "that God isn't all powerful or has no method behind what he does." (!!!!!) Evolution / common descent is a scientific framework describing the course & history of life on earth.... it doesn't have anything to say about God, any more than eg meteorology does!
 
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