I'm simultaneously afraid of, confused by, and pitying Young Earth Creationists. People who legitimately believe that God put fossils in the ground to screw with us just blow my mind. What kind of douche bag of a god would do that? Loki, certainly. And maybe Zeus when he was feeling particularly spry (but wasn't able to find any attractive women or farm animals), but not Jehovah. At least not the version I read about in the Bible and heard about at church.
These are people using religion to try and answer science questions, which is like using a cigarette lighter instead of a spark plug. Sure, it'll technically work, but the result is messy, painful, and difficult. Religion is for answering philosophical questions; science is for answering mechanical questions. Science can't tell you why the universe suddenly exploded in the Big Bang, only that it did. Likewise, the Genesis story is a dumbed-down version related to people who couldn't even understand that the Earth is round and not at the center of the universe. The Bible explains it in a way that gets all the necessary details out of the way without going into all the minutiae. If you were going to describe a refrigerator to an ancient Israelite, would you explain that it takes alternating electrical current (supplied by an outside source) and uses that to power an engine that extracts heat from inside the box using thermodynamics, thus rendering the inside cool? Or would you just say "It's a magic box that keeps things cold?" One tells them only what they need to know and the other would be so complex as to be completely incomprehensible.
I know. Evolution is as close to being a Law (like gravity) that we can get with modern scientific tools. It's still a Theory (like relativity, which everyone seems to accept as fact) only because we don't have a time machine. And the Bible is not equipped to answer every question, so stop looking for it to do so. It won't tell you how to cook a roast, when to rotate crops, or why the IRS calls it the "1040 EZ" form when there's nothing easy about it. Those answers aren't there. But if you're looking for a moral compass, something to guide you on a basic level and shape your interactions with others, that's all right there. Just don't expect your home theater manual to tell you how to change a tire.
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These are people using religion to try and answer science questions, which is like using a cigarette lighter instead of a spark plug. Sure, it'll technically work, but the result is messy, painful, and difficult.
Religion is for answering philosophical questions; science is for answering mechanical questions. Science can't tell you why the universe suddenly exploded in the Big Bang, only that it did. Likewise, the Genesis story is a dumbed-down version related to people who couldn't even understand that the Earth is round and not at the center of the universe.
The Bible explains it in a way that gets all the necessary details out of the way without going into all the minutiae. If you were going to describe a refrigerator to an ancient Israelite, would you explain that it takes alternating electrical current (supplied by an outside source) and uses that to power an engine that extracts heat from inside the box using thermodynamics, thus rendering the inside cool? Or would you just say "It's a magic box that keeps things cold?" One tells them only what they need to know and the other would be so complex as to be completely incomprehensible.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0gAcbAGPH4
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And the Bible is not equipped to answer every question, so stop looking for it to do so. It won't tell you how to cook a roast, when to rotate crops, or why the IRS calls it the "1040 EZ" form when there's nothing easy about it. Those answers aren't there. But if you're looking for a moral compass, something to guide you on a basic level and shape your interactions with others, that's all right there. Just don't expect your home theater manual to tell you how to change a tire.
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