Quote (Subdue @ Sep 7 2010 12:41am)
Conviction, it is a bit difficult to take you seriously when you sprinkle sarcasm throughout your argument. That being said, the creation story can and has already been proven historically inaccurate.
Carbon Dating has shown that the earth has existed far longer than the creation story and Biblical accounts suggest. Carbon Dating involves measuring the amount of radioactive carbon in a given item (usually rocks found deep in the earth.) Using the half life of the radioactive carbon, scientists are able to extrapolate how long that particular rock has been there.
That being said, take the creation story as what it is, a story written to illustrate a lesson. Jesus was said to use these stories quite frequently. They're called parables.
Does that mean that God didn't create the world? No, not necessarily. It simply means he didn't create it in the way laid out in Genesis. It is still more believable that a supreme being created the world, than that there was some explosion that created order out of chaos.
What about evolution? There are generally two types of evolution beliefs. The first, is the basic evolution through natural selection, whereby, individuals in a population mutate some feature that makes them more capable of surviving in their environment. As a result of increased survivability, those individuals procreate more proficiently, and overtime their mutation becomes more common place. One example cited frequently involves moths in England, where during the Industrial Revolution the butterfly population changed to include increasingly large numbers of black individuals, as they were better able to hide from predators against the soot covered trees.
The second type of evolution suggests that all species evolved from single celled organisms. This type usually uses the previous type of evolution as evidence. However, this form of evolution runs into some pretty obvious and glaring inconsistencies, the biggest of which is, where are the intermediary forms, and how were those forms beneficial?
It is also important to keep in mind that not all mutations can be passed down. Many mutations, even if they are somehow beneficial (which is not exactly common), result in sterility.
My personal conclusion? I believe that God created the world, and then for the most part, left it alone. As man began to grow in intelligence as a species, he began to ponder his own creation, and stumbled upon the concept of God. Then, he came to the conclusion that this concept could be used to instill fear, and from that fear, obedience. He became the first Shaman-King figure, and under that guise, spread belief in his religion.
Does that mean that people can't have divine experiences? No, not necessarily. I believe that many religions have really made some sort of connection with the supreme being that Christians refer to as God, but that connection is most observable by the individual. It's not really something that can be quantified by the one who experiences it for the comprehension of someone else.
You should research Intelligent Design. I know that it explains that, much like when Adam was created, he wasn't a baby. So, like the body, things like carbon dating, the age of the trees and the rings that tell their age, and the age of the earth were created at a certain age. They didn't begin as seeds. I haven't read into it enough to explain it thoroughly, but that's a rough summary.