Are young earth creationists self-aware?

[Mister Agenda]

I figured out the Bible was iffy before I was so indoctrinated into anti-evolution as to actually use those terrible arguments against it. I think if I had skipped reading the Bible, the cognitive dissonance of arguing for creationism would have snapped me out of it. At least I hope so (shudders at close brush with brainwashing).

[Thumpalumpacus]

I figured out the Bible was iffy before I was so indoctrinated into anti-evolution as to actually use those terrible arguments against it. I think if I had skipped reading the Bible, the cognitive dissonance of arguing for creationism would have snapped me out of it. At least I hope so (shudders at close brush with brainwashing).

Funny you mention this.  Being raised a Southern Baptist, my first encounter with doubt was brought about at eight or nine.  I had long had a fascination with dinosaurs, but it was only around that age that I realized that fossils were absolutely incompatible with a literal reading of the Bible.  That exposure to interpretation made me read the Bible differently.

[Cyanne]

I think I was saved from Christianity by my mother's ability to contradict herself like this. She is such a critical thinker and uses sound logic in almost everything except religion. So I learned to question things but I still got brainwashed. before becoming an atheist I went through a stage where I was questioning, not the reliability of the Bible, but how other Christians interpreted it. So I resolved to get the right message out of the Bible once and for all armed with logic, research and Reading In Context.

That didn't work out too well...

Now I look back and think, man that is weird. How I was questioning everything except the one thing I had no reason to believe... But you just don't get it when you're in that mindset.

[Plu]

That didn't work out too well...

Sounds like it worked out pretty well, actually ;)

[Cyanne]

That didn't work out too well...

Sounds like it worked out pretty well, actually ;)

True, but originally I didn't think the right message was going to be "this is all a bunch of bullshit" :)

I thought it was more like "God loves everyone and no one goes to hell" :P

[billhilly]

I don't know about self aware but they certainly are intentionally obtuse.  Behold the stupid................

As much as you want math to work, it would not work in a random chance universe. Mathematics work because the God of the Bible established constants. In an evolutionary universe we could not depend on anything from one day t the next. Chemical reactions would not be reliable. Laws of science wouldn't even exist.

One can't start with with a Singularity which inflates after in infinite amount of time and reasonably believe in uniformity of nature. The Singularity would have lost all available energy to inflate an infinite time in its past. But yet supposedly it inflated. This contradicts gravity. All the gravity of all the black holes, all the gravity of all the galaxies, all the gravity of all the lonely stars, planets, asteroids and everything else would have been in the Singularity.

Also another lack of uniformity is the idea a body at rest stays at rest unless acted on by an outside force. Based on this there is no outside force.

So what we have is miracle after miracle after miracle without The Miracle Worker. This is not science, but a philosophical escape mechanism.

[Colanth]

Ouch!  That amount of stupid actually hurts.

[Jorjor]

I  :rollin: at the title

[Bobbotov]

I never believed creationism. But then again I didn't believe much of what the Bible had to offer as answers to anything remotely to do with reality. Even when I was going to church as a kid I had a lot of suspicions as to the motivations of religion. I think back in the day when the people were mostly illiterate the Bible myths had a lot of hold over people since they had no awareness of anything else. But to retain those erroneous beliefs in a society that is scientifically based is beyond idiotic. I even think most religious people are having a hard time with it as it is patently absurd in light of what science has proved in the last several hundred years. But they have to do it for if they concede it opens cracks in their whole rigid belief system. They have a tough job: defending stupidity while trying to put together cogent arguments. I might have pity for them if it wasn't for their stubbornness.

The biggest problem I have is that their intractable position puts science in the category that it  is some kind of evil conspiracy and for a long time science was suppressed by these fools. Instead they should embrace awareness and adapt to new knowledge. But they do not seek knowledge. To me, to deny knowledge is to deny the very thing that makes humans unique. They feel threatened by science but science, fortunately, does not feel threatened by them. My adage about the difference between science and religion:

Science: If you see it you will believe it
Religion: If you believe it you will see it.

Religion puts belief a priori to knowledge, This is ass backwards.

[Mister Agenda]

In a world with many examples of gliding animals, creationists can ask: 'what good is half a wing?'

In a world with animals posessing eyes of every conceivable level of complexity, creationists can ask: 'what good is half an eye?'

There's something strange going on with their thought processes.

[Graceless]

Are young-earth creationists self-aware? Probably.

Are young-earth creationists self-conscious? Not in my experience.

[ApostateLois]

"The Bible says it, I believe it, and that's that," is what I often heard as a young Christian. I still hear it today. Not surprisingly, it is a blatant lie, because there are many things that these Fundies don't believe, such as the injunctions against eating certain animals, or wearing certain kinds of clothing, or selling all they own so they can follow Jesus. But when it comes to their just-so fairy tale of how the world came to be, they accept that nonsense whole-heartedly.

[Bobbotov]

"The Bible says it, I believe it, and that's that," is what I often heard as a young Christian. I still hear it today. Not surprisingly, it is a blatant lie, because there are many things that these Fundies don't believe, such as the injunctions against eating certain animals, or wearing certain kinds of clothing, or selling all they own so they can follow Jesus. But when it comes to their just-so fairy tale of how the world came to be, they accept that nonsense whole-heartedly.

The conundrum for them is that they have to accept the Old Testament to make the New Testament make any sense. It is so apparent that the two versions of God and ideologies are completely different so it forces them to cherry pick. And they see no problem with this which is the root cause of their cognitive dissonance.

[Crump]

The very curious thing here is that the World doesn't need to be 6000 years old for the Genesis story to be true, in an allegorical sense. Science and faith are only in conflict if the faithful insist on denying the evidence of scientific knowledge.

[josephpalazzo]

The very curious thing here is that the World doesn't need to be 6000 years old for the Genesis story to be true, in an allegorical sense. Science and faith are only in conflict if the faithful insist on denying the evidence of scientific knowledge.

The opposition to science is understandable. From their point of view, if the story of Adam and Eve is false, no paradise lost, then there is no justification for the coming of Jesus. So their position against science is consistent with their faith. The people who are inconsistent are those who believe in the bible and science, when science demonstrably shows that the bible is way off. Cognitive dissonance becomes a vital part of their lives.